From Paul Newman, mission co-project scientist: We have had some success in bolting our instruments onto the Global Hawk. We just completed installing the NOAA ozone instrument, led by Laurel Watts, one of several National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists participating in the campaign. (The principle investigator for the instrument is Ru-Shan Gao, but Laurel […]
From Paul Newman, mission co-project scientist: There is an old Latin quote: “Maxima omnium virtutum est patientia.” Or “patience is the greatest virtue.” When it comes to mounting science instruments on an aircraft, you need to continually return to that quote. We have 10 science instruments that we will be flying on the Global Hawk […]
From Paul Newman, co-project scientist: All of the GloPac instrument teams have now arrived at Dryden Flight Research Center, and our integration of instruments onto the Global Hawk UAS continues. We’re putting 10 instruments on the plane, and each team has 2 to 3 scientists working on their instrument. This means we have a lot […]
From Paul Newman, GloPac co-project scientist: A flight day with the Global Hawk flight day starts very early and runs very late. For a 7 AM takeoff, the plane must be pulled out to a concrete pad adjacent to the runway at about 4 AM. This means the crew must arrive by 3 AM to get […]
Like the booby bird, the Global Hawk is graceful in the air but awkward on the ground.
I cruised into the hangar and found a beehive of activity around the Global Hawk…Now I’m on the two most important tasks at the start of a field mission. 1) Find the coffee pot. 2) Find the bathroom.
The Global Hawk is a unique robotic plane that can fly for more than 30 hours at a time, soaring as high as 65,000 feet and as far as 11,000 nautical miles (12,659 miles).
Last night, we took load #1 of equipment down the mountain. Today was dedicated to packing up & hauling the rest of the equipment down with the snowcat. A bit of a snowstorm is in the forecast, and we need to get our equipment down before it hits. Sound familiar? Friday, a truck will take […]
Today is our last day of measurements. We took a radiometer measurement in the morning, and then dug the final snowpit in the exact spot that the radiometer was viewing during the whole experiment. That way, we will know exactly what the radiometer was seeing. The pit measurements took hours and it was cold today […]
Here is how we “commute’” to the lab each morning. Dr. Noah Molotch (U. Colorado), Dr. Dan Berisford (JPL) Jen Petrzelka (U. Colorado), and Ty Atkins spent all day today (and the previous 2 days) making snowpit measurements using both traditional and new high-tech methods. In this photo, you can see how deep the snowpit […]
