Monthly Archives: October 2011

A broken power inverter brings delays

From Tania (ESA), East Midlands (UK), 24 October

Aircraft being used for the Wavemill campaign

Unfortunately, the Wavemill campaign didn’t start that well as the power inverter on the plane died.

There we were with the engines running, getting ready to go and then … kaput. However, a new one has been ordered and it should be here before 09.00 on Tuesday.

This means our trial run is being pushed to Tuesday morning and the first flight will be in the middle of the night, fingers crossed!

Wavemill instrument

Set to fly over the Irish Sea to test a new instrument

From Tania (ESA), Coventry (UK), 24 October

Tania Casal

Tania Casal

This week, I am in the field for the Wavemill campaign.

 The Wavemill Proof of Concept campaign is taking place on 24–28 October over the Liverpool bay Coastal Observatory and Isle of Anglesey off the north west coast of Wales in the Irish Sea.

 The objective of the campaign is to fly an interferometric SAR instrument with squinted beams to retrieve both ocean-surface topology and ocean current information – a new mission concept.

The instrument was developed by Astrium Limited and is a C-band system and will be mounted on a DC-3 aircraft.

The plan is to make three flights – a test flight on Monday afternoon and then two night flights over the following days.

 Will keep you posted.