Flying High with MABEL

Scientists made a series of high-altitude flights this month from NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Palmdale, Calif., demonstrating the scientific feasibility of surface elevation measurements to be made by one of the agency’s future Earth observing satellites, the Ice, Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2). The first image (above) returned from a flight Dec. 8 clearly shows a layer of cirrus clouds and a high density of data points outlining surface elevation over California. Data in the image are preliminary and not for scientific use.

The data are from the Multiple Altimeter Beam Experimental Lidar (MABEL) instrument, assembled by a team led by ICESat-2 instrument scientist Matt McGill at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Tucked into the nose of the ER-2 aircraft (right) MABEL flew at an elevation of 65,000 feet (more than 12 miles) over five targets across the U.S. Southwest collecting surface elevation information similar to what will be collected by ICESat-2, scheduled for launch in January 2016.

“These were engineering test flights with intelligent science targets,” said Kelly Brunt, a polar scientist from Goddard who was in the field as a science liaison for flight planning. “We wanted to hit spectrum of targets that represent what the scientists are interested in, such as ocean water, fresh water, trees, snow, steep terrain and salt flats.

“The density of data collected is astounding, and will allow us to characterize what we see from space,” said Thorsten Markus, ICESat-2 project scientist and head of the Cryosphere Branch at Goddard.

To learn more, visit poster session C41A, “Measuring Earth’s Third Dimension: ICESat, IceBridge, CryoSat, and Beyond,” at 8 a.m. on Thursday, Dec. 16 at the 2010 AGU fall meeting in San Francisco, Calif.

–Kathryn Hansen, NASA’s Earth Science News Team

The First A in NASA Stands for Aeronautics

                                                                                                                                                                                        Credit: NASA
If you’ve explored NASA’s website, you may have noticed that What on Earth is just one of a network of NASA blogs. You can find many of them on this main index page, but there are also NASA bloggers scattered at numerous other pages.

Earth Observatory’s Notes from the Field focuses, for example, on scientific field campaigns. And NASA’s Climate Change website, which is run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), features a blog called My Big Fat Planet. At Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), Geeked on Goddard (aka gogblog), written by a former Astronomy blogger, is fast becoming a go-to-source for all things Goddard (and includes plenty of earth science news).  

Tony Freeman, an earth science manager at JPL and occasional contributor to My Big Fat Planet, wrote a post this week that caught our eye. Tony shines a spotlight on our fleet of research aircraft, based mostly at Dryden Flight Research Center, and gives a fabulous reminder that the first A in NASA stands for aeronautics. Here’s how he explains why we bother with aircraft:

Why bother with aircraft when we can fly spacecraft? Well, airborne missions enable us to do unique — and crucial — experiments in the fields of atmospheric chemistry and volcanology, for example, from altitudes that range from 100 feet (30 meters) to 60,000 feet (18 kilometers). They also help us to check and validate the performance of the instruments that fly onboard NASA satellites such as Aqua, Aura, and others in the so-called “A-train” of Earth-observing satellites. And airborne instruments are often cheaper to launch. Tethered and untethered balloons; manned aircraft ranging from small propeller craft (think Cessna) to large jet engines (think the DC-8 aircraft); unmanned airplanes such as the large surveillance craft known as the Global Hawk — NASA uses them all.

You can read the rest of Tony’s post here.

Soaring for Science

NASA's Global Hawk autonomous plane

The newest bird in NASA’s flock — the unmanned Global Hawk — took off at 7 a.m. Pacific time today (April 2) from Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The flight is the first airborne checkout of the plane since it was loaded with 11 science instruments for the Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) mission.

Pilots are also streamlining processes to coordinate the workload while the nearly autonomous plane is flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet (almost twice as high as a commercial airliner). Operators and mission researchers are using the day to make sure all instruments are operating properly while in flight — particularly at the cold temperatures of high altitude — and communicating clearly with the plane and ground controllers. Mission participants expect to begin collecting data when actual GloPac science flights begin over the Pacific Ocean later this month.

GloPac is the Global Hawk’s first scientific mission. Instruments will sample the chemical composition of air in Earth’s two lowest atmospheric layers — the stratosphere and troposphere — and profile the dynamics and meteorology of both. They also will observe the distribution of clouds and aerosol particles. The instruments are operated by scientists and technicians from seven science institutions and are funded by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Paul Newman, the co-mission scientist for GloPac, has been blogging about the mission on Earth Observatory’s “Notes from the Field” site. Here are a few excerpts to whet your appetite…

…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…

…During the integration this week, we’ve had to cut holes into the aircraft. I told Chris Naftel, the Global Hawk project manager, that we had to cut some holes into the plane for the Meteorological Measurement System. Chris replied: “I don’t want to hear anything about the holes. It pains me!” In spite of Chris’ pain, the little holes are critical for measuring winds. You’re now asking, what? Little holes? For winds? It’s actually a very slick little measurement that relies on the work of Daniel Bernoulli, a Dutch mathematician who lived in the 1700s…

Read more here …