NASA’s C-130H Hercules airborne laboratory took to the skies at 3:23 p.m. Monday, Nov. 9, from Wallops Flight Facility en route to St. John’s International Airport, St. John’s, Newfoundland, to support the North Atlantic Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) mission.
NAAMES is a five-year NASA Langley Research Center study of the annual cycle of phytoplankton and the impact that small airborne particles emitted from the ocean have on the climate-sensitive North Atlantic.
Research flights begin Thursday, Nov. 12, from St. John’s. The flights will be coordinated with the research vessel (R/V) Atlantis, operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Atlantis will provide detailed ship-based measurements of plankton in the North Atlantic.