Monthly Archives: December 2011

Christmas greetings from Rovaniemi: the home of Father Christmas

From Dirk (ESA), Finland, 20 December

Happy scientist before take off

I have been in Rovaniemi  in Finland since Sunday following the SnowSar campaign.

Rovaniemi is well known as the home of Father Christmas or Santa Claus – and you can really feel the spirit of Christmas across the entire city.

With this spirit giving us a good feeeling, we took off on Monday to collect images of snow using an airborne radar.

It is the first of a series of seven flights that will take place before March 2012. The aim is to gather information about temporal changes in the amount of water held in the snow.

It seems Santa has been on our side as everything worked well and we can go home providing the first set of high-quality airborne data for the development of ESA's CoReH2O candidate mission.

Before going home to also celebrate Christmas, I will make sure to get the official Santa Claus stamp of Rovaniemi in my passport.

I wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

First successful flight from Kiruna

From Dirk (ESA) back in NL, 17 December

Kiruna flight path

We had a bit trouble with the landing last week, which damaged some of the aircraft’s tyres.

 However, after replacing the tyres and checking the functionality of the aircraft the Russian crew gave the OK to carry out another flight. 

 The plane took off on Friday afternoon to look through the upper atmosphere with very high resolution.

 The picture shows the flight path of the Geophysica off the Norwegian coast. 

The colours give an indication of the atmospheric winds spinning and changing direction.

 With the flight, we hope to study the features just west of the Norwegian coast, around point C on the map. 

 The Gloria instrument worked throughout the flight so we achieved some good data showing the dynamics and the chemistry of the atmosphere.

 Now the aircraft will go back toRussiaand everyone is happy that we have the first data from this new instrument before going home for Christmas.

 

First high-altitude flight from Kiruna gets underway

From Dirk (ESA), Kiruna, northern Sweden, 11 December

First flight from Kiruna gets underway

Great news! The Geophysica aircraft made its way out of the hangar for the first flight of the ESSENCE campaign.

Owing to a few problems with the electronics and the GLORIA instrument playing up a bit we had to delay the first flight.

So we were really happy this morning to see the pilot take his seat and the plane lift off.

Once it had disappeared from view in the clouds, everyone followed the flight on the computer screen.

As soon as it had reached the right altitude, the instrument was put into measurement mode and as far as we can tell, the data look promising.

We are now keen to analyse the data – which will hopefully provide insight into the complexities of the upper atmosphere. This is crucial for the development of the PREMIER candidate Earth Explorer mission, which aims to improve our understanding of how atmospheric chemistry and climate are linked.

Preparing for flight from a snowy Kiruna

Antarctic expedition checks CryoSat down-under

From campaign team (UTAS/AAD/AWI), East Antarctica, 10 December

Skidoo and corner reflector

Skidoo and corner reflector (credits: UTAS–J. Beardsley)

Next week marks 100 years since Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole. As a team of scientists brave the Antarctic to validate data from ESA’s CryoSat mission, it’s hard to imagine what these first intrepid explorers would have thought of today’s advances in polar science.

Read the full article about this challenging Antarctic campaign on ESA's Campaigns web page: http://www.esa.int/esaLP/SEMHXD5XPVG_LPcampaigns_0.html

Limb viewing in Kiruna

From Dirk (ESA) Kiruna, northern Sweden, 9 December

Preparing for limb sounding

Last Sunday, I made my way up to Kiruna in northern Sweden to follow the ESSENCE campaign.

The aim is to carry out measurements of the atmosphere from a high-altitude research aircraft called Geophysica to support the development of a candidate ESA Earth Explorer mission called PREMIER which promises to provide vital clues on how atmospheric chemistry and climate are linked.

Geophysica is one of the very few aircraft that can fly up to 21 km above the surface of Earth, which is twice the height of a commercial plane.

A new ‘limb’ sounder is onboard. This type of instrument looks horizontally through the atmosphere so that information on temperature, trace gases and water vapour at different altitudes can be gathered.

This unique instrument, called GLORIA (Gimballed Limb Observer for Radiance Imaging of the Atmosphere), is the first to use 2D detector arrays to image the atmosphere with very high resolution.

The instrument was developed by Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and Research Centre Juelich in Germany, involving scientists from a number of different disciplines.

Our plan is to make four flights in total. The first two flights are dedicated to the basic testing of the instrument. The other two flights will hopefully give new insights into climate-relevant trace gases such as water vapour, ozone and carbon dioxide.

Computer troubles

GLORIA installed on Geophysica

The idea was to fly on Tuesday, but during testing on Sunday and Monday the main computer crashed when the engines of the aircraft were started.

It took a long time for the crew to fix this problem, but eventually the problem was fixed. In principle, it would have been possible to fly today, but some of the team had worked through the night so it was to have a day’s rest day and start afresh and on Friday.

So we keep our fingers crossed for the first flight tomorrow.

The nice thing is that we will have a satellite-phone connection to the instrument, so we will hear if the instrument works properly during the actual flight.