**[First Posted on March 5, 2011]**
All of the scientists, engineers, pilots, and crew onboard the NASA DC-8 and the NASA Airborne Science Program support staff on the ground were deeply saddened by the launch failure of the Glory satellite. For more information about the specifics of what went wrong, watch the NASA news conference. For information on what the loss of Glory means to climate science, see here.
The NASA DC-8 left its home base at the NASA Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility in California at 9:47PM PST.
NASA DC-8 flight track (red line). The DC-8 tracked Glory’s launch while flying at 41,000 ft at 7.5S 120W
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Instruments installed on the DC-8 by the KTech Corporation first detected Glory approximately four minutes after launch and tracked it for ten additional minutes. The failure of the fairing (a protective cover) to separate approximately three minutes after launch was revealed in Glory’s unexpected trajectory.
Telemetry data collected by the NASA DC-8 and from other locations will be used to better understand what went wrong.
**[First posted on February 17, 2011]**
The NASA ER-2 in flight |
After the ER-2 returned, instrument scientists from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center were literally jumping and yelling for joy in the hangar at Dryden when they took their first look at the data!
Wind profile data collected by TWiLiTE will be important for analyzing atmospheric dynamics, for weather predictions, and for understanding Earth’s hydrological cycle. Data reduction and processing is now in progress. The data will also be compared with ground validation measurements to verify TWiLiTE’s performance.
TWiLiTE sits on its dolly in the hangar at Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility after its successful flights on the NASA ER-2 (Feb 17, 2011)
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Engineers work on the ER-2 after TWiLiTE is removed (Feb 17, 2011)
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The TWiLiTE instrument was developed with funding from the Earth Science Technology Office as a demonstration for the 3D-WINDS Global Wind Space Mission. ER-2 flight testing of TWiLiTE was provided by the NASA Airborne Instrument Technology Transfer program.