Notes from the Field

Hugo Berthelot, biogeochemical oceanographer, is studying phytoplankton organisms and the biochemical processes they take part in.

When people think of science, the first examples that come to mind are often dramatic triumphs—the moon landing, the invention of DNA sequencing, or the discovery of the polio vaccine. Almost every exciting experimental result, however, is the result of an enormous amount of unseen effort. Thorough preparation, resourceful improvisation, success and failure, and improvement […]

In just two short weeks I’ll be trading the cold, snowy beaches of Rhode Island for the warm, tropical beaches of Hawaii. Such is the life of an oceanography graduate student! Although I do enjoy traveling and discovering new places, what’s most exciting is that I’ll have an entire month to conduct my research in […]

As the year comes to a close, I’m probably not the only one looking back at how 2016 panned out. For the CYGNSS team, we ended 2016 with a lot of excitement, after carefully and patiently working on pre-launch development for the past few years. It takes a long time to develop things in careful […]

It’s Friday, and the excitement of launch day yesterday still hasn’t worn off. Not only did we see CYGNSS get launched into space, we were also able to make first contact with them. I talked about the excitement of the launch itself yesterday, so today’s post will describe our experiences communicating with each of the […]

I’m currently writing from Hangar AE, where it all happened. While we wait to make contact with all of the CYGNSS satellites after launch, I’m going to attempt some coherent thoughts about the past few days. You may already have been following what’s been going on since my last post, but I’ll give a brief […]

I’ve just gotten back from the CYGNSS pre-launch reception. We were happy to get to this day, after countless hours of hard work. Now, we’re all just excited and nervous to see what happens when our baby CYGNSS satellites (Octuplets!) are born into the world. We can’t wait to see what science mysteries CYGNSS data […]

You’re probably wondering why I’m down at NASA KSC so early before launch day. We’re not down here relaxing on the beach; the weekend before launch is packed with events. For example, just today, I participated in our CYGNSS Science Team meeting and two press events. Earlier today, I kicked off our science team meeting by […]

My name is Mary Morris and I’m a Ph.D. candidate in the Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering department at the University of Michigan. My advisor, Prof. Chris Ruf, just so happens to be the principle investigator (PI) of the University of Michigan-led NASA Earth Venture class satellite mission, CYGNSS. CYGNSS consists of a constellation […]

By Alek Petty After 65 Rosette casts, 59 XCTD probes, 61 Bongo tows (nets that collect zooplankton samples), 212 surface water profiles, 40 ocean drifters released, three buoys deployed, one buoy recovered, three deep sea moorings collected and redeployed, eight ice cores collected, and 27 scientists deployed and partially recovered, our expedition around the Beaufort […]