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Despite decades of observations and interpretations of ultraviolet airglow, advancing the derivation of physical parameters of the ionosphere and atmosphere beyond the current successes presents difficult challenges due to the lack of comprehensive understanding of the fundamental detailed physics that surrounds the associated airglow emission process. The daytime thermosphere, while better characterized than the ionosphere, is still subject to uncertainties caused by the need for somewhat ad-hoc modeling using a multi-step process that creates the UV airglow emissions. The state of the field for the daytime ionosphere is currently based on only a few dozen profiles obtained from sounding rocket and satellite missions, none of which were designed to obtain the necessary comprehensive set of measurements. We have designed a sounding rocket experiment that will validate extreme and far ultraviolet (EUV …