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bystander
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by bystander » Wed Feb 24, 2010 7:39 pm
Media Day Planned for First NASA Global Hawk Science Campaign
NASA GSFC 10-017 - 2010 Feb 24
Reporters are invited to a media day in April to observe the first environmental science mission of NASA's Global Hawk unmanned aircraft system at the Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.
The Global Hawk Pacific 2010 mission, or GloPac, will involve a series of long-duration flights by the autonomously operated aircraft. The flights will travel over the Pacific Ocean south to the equator, west past Hawaii, and north into the Arctic. Ten instruments on the aircraft will collect a wide range of atmospheric data.
NASA Global Hawk Pacific Mission (GloPac)
NASA and Northrop Grumman partnered to return this Global Hawk Advanced
Concept Technology Demonstrator to flight under NASA operation. NASA and
the science community will use this aircraft for high-altitude, long-duration
Earth science missions. (NASA photo / Carla Thomas)
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bystander
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by bystander » Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:22 pm
Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) Mission Science Instruments
- ACAM — Airborne Compact Atmospheric Mapper
CPL — Cloud Physics LIDAR
FCAS — Focused Cavity Aerosol Spectrometer
NMASS — Nuclei-mode Aerosol Size Spectrometer
HDVis — High-Definition Video System
MMS — Meteorological Measurement System
MTP — Microwave Temperature Profiler
UHSAS — Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer
UCATS — Unmanned Aircraft System Chromatograph for Atmospheric Trace Species
UAS Ozone — NOAA Unmanned Aerial System Ozone Instrument
ULH — Unmanned Aerial System Laser Hygrometer
GloPac Flash Interactive Features
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bystander
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by bystander » Tue Apr 13, 2010 9:26 pm
NASA's Global Hawk Completes First Science Flight Over the Pacific
NASA pilots and flight engineers, together with colleagues from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), have successfully completed the first science flight of the Global Hawk unpiloted aircraft system over the Pacific Ocean. The flight was the first of five scheduled for this month's Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac) mission to study atmospheric science over the Pacific and Arctic oceans.
The Global Hawk is a robotic plane that can fly autonomously to altitudes above 60,000 feet (18.3 kilometers) -- roughly twice as high as a commercial airliner -- and as far as 11,000 nautical miles (20,000 kilometers) -- half the circumference of Earth. Operators pre-program a flight path, and then the plane flies itself for as long as 30 hours, staying in contact through satellite and line-of-site communications to the ground control station at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center in California's Mojave Desert.
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The plane carries 11 instruments to sample the chemical composition of the troposphere and stratosphere. The instruments profile the dynamics and meteorology of both layers and observe the distribution of clouds and aerosol particles. Project scientists expect to take observations from the equator north to the Arctic Circle and west of Hawaii.
Although the plane is designed to fly on its own, pilots can change its course or altitude based on interesting atmospheric phenomena ahead. Researchers have the ability via communications links to control their instruments from the ground.
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