By Emily Fischer, Goddard Space Flight Center In the early 1900s, Ernest Shackleton attempted to travel across Antarctica, but as they neared the continent his ship became stuck in an pack of sea ice and was slowly crushed before it reached the landmass. Over 100 years later and on the opposite side of the globe …
By Laura Rocchio, Goddard Space Flight Center Leaving from Nassau on a Tuesday night in August 1975, Jacques Cousteau and his team set out on the Calypso for a three-week expedition designed to help NASA determine if the young Landsat satellite mission could measure the depth of shallow ocean waters. For days, the Calypso played …
by Emily Fischer Flying a plane over Alaska's vast landscape provides a birds-eye view of some incredible sights. Bears run across frigid streams, moose trample through mounds of snow, and golden eagles own the air above ice-capped mountains. Glaciers cut paths through these mountains, leaving lakes and rivers in their wake. These glaciers are especially …
by Emily Fischer Trudging through snow up to their thighs, researchers Nicholas Hasson and Phil Hanke pull 200 pounds of equipment through boreal terrain near Fairbanks, Alaska. Once they reach their destination – a frozen, collapsing lake — they drill through two feet of ice to access frigid water containing copious amounts of methane. Hasson …
By Katie Stern, IMPACTS' Deputy Project Manager / HUNTER ARMY AIRFIELD, SAVANNAH, GEORGIA/ "Get in there and check it out!" I was encouraged by "Corky" Cortes from the NASA ER-2 Life Support Team to see how the pilots prepare for their flight. This was my first NASA field campaign with the ER-2, a high altitude …
By Jessica Merzdorf / GRAND MESA LODGE, COLORADO After visiting with part of the SnowEx 2020 airborne team, we headed up the mountain to rendezvous with the ground team, stationed at Grand Mesa Lodge. "Does anyone have a headache?" asked Jerry Newlin, SnowEx operations manager, as we left the little town of Delta and the …
By Jessica Merzdorf / GRAND MESA LODGE, COLORADO What is it like to do science nearly 2 miles above sea level? At a majestic 10,500 feet elevation, Grand Mesa is the world's tallest mesa, or flat-topped mountain. It's also the site of an intense month of data collection by NASA's SnowEx 2020, a ground and …
By Ellen Gray /NASA'S WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, VIRGINIA/ After a cloudy and rainy morning, by 1:50 pm the sun had come out and the skies were clear for take-off at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The P-3 Orion research aircraft outfitted with eleven instruments to measure conditions inside snow clouds was heading north to …
By Ellen Gray /NASA'S WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, VIRGINIA/ The IMPACTS team is what makes the field campaign happen. Over 200 people are contributing to the project from aircraft crews and managers, to support and logistics staff, to the scientists running the instruments and asking the big questions. They include veteran pilots and mission managers, university …
By Ellen Gray / NASA'S WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY, VIRGINIA/ Nothing to be done. When your field campaign depends on chasing winter storms you have to wait for the weather to arrive in its own time. For the science team of the Investigation of Microphysics Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms, or IMPACTS, campaign that means carefully …
