SMOS ice: first coincident flight from Svalbard a success

The weather has been pretty good since arriving in Svalbard on Friday. On Sunday, we took the opportunity of doing a two-hour test flight – the airport only opens for a short time on Sundays. All systems were working perfectly, particularly the Emirad instrument and the snow radar are in good health.

Sea ice from the Polar-5. (Stefan Hendricks, AWI)

Because the snow radar works optimally at an altitude of 200 ft, we had to wear survival suits, which are quite bulky and uncomfortable to walk around but extremely warm.  For EMIRAD we have no altitude limitations so we flew higher when we had to do nose and wing wags to test the system.

Suited up in the Polar-5 aircraft. (Stefan Hendricks, AWI)

These can be quite interesting and definitely got me looking around to check where the next sick bag was located … but fear not, I managed to keep the contents of my stomach inside! Anyway, it certainly didn’t put me off my dinner later back on solid ground – I had reindeer steak, which was exquisite!

So with everything tested and working well, we did our first measurement flight over the sea ice today. A highlight of the flight was seeing a polar bear, running on the sea ice! Although it was only for a split second, it was amazing!

RV Lance from the Polar-5. The ship carries instruments for measuring sea ice and the helicopter carrying EM-bird flies from the ship. (Stefan Hendricks, AWI)

Wildlife aside, today, we did the first coincident flights with the Helicopter and EM Bird (HEM) and sampled many types of sea ice. The HEM flies from the RV Lance ship.

We flew low when using the snow radar and high when using the Emirad instrument. Although Emirad was on all the time, it works optimally at higher altitudes.

Polar-5 cockpit. (Stefan Hendricks, AWI)

We were followed by the HEM for around 200 km and then they had to turn back since their time limit is a bit over two hours.  We flew over RV Lance where my colleague Matthias Drusch is stationed.

Sea of white. (Stefan Hendricks, AWI)

We called Matthias 30 minutes after we landed to let him know that all went according to plan on our side and he told us that it was the same with them.  So all in all, a very good coordinated day and we plan to follow the same procedure tomorrow!

Post from Tania Casal (ESA), Svalbard, 24 March 2014