A six-hour flight makes for a long day, but I'm so glad to learn more about NASA's Earth science missions and how even the seemingly simplest things — such as clouds and climate — can have intricacies and complexities that people devote their whole lives to studying. by Andrea Lloyd / NASA'S WALLOPS FLIGHT FACILITY …
On May 6, 2019, the final transmission of 22 gigabytes of planned science data was downlinked by the mission team.
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ From Alberta, Canada, to Michigan, USA. That's how far the plumes of smoke traveled in a few short days, from July 21 to July 24. Smoke from wildfires has staying power. Laura Thapa, a graduate student at the University of California Los Angeles and member of the FIREX-AQ forecasting …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Each morning Amber Soja gets up at 5:00 a.m. to check the fire weather. She's an associate scientist from the National Institute of Aerospace based at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, one of the lead forecasters for FIREX-AQ with one of the most important jobs: distilling the information …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ The FIREX-AQ campaign is flying out of Boise, Idaho. The choice of location was no accident. Boise is also home to the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), the nerve center of all major firefighting operations for the United States. Earlier this week, we took a tour. "NIFC is not …
By Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ Thursday, July 25 "It's nice to have a flight plan to deviate from," said DC-8 pilot Tim Vest at the debrief on Thursday night. It was just after 10 p.m. and the DC-8 had just returned from a 6-hour flight over a fire they weren't planning on visiting. The …
By Ellen Gray / NEAR STANLEY, IDAHO / Wednesday, July 24 We were ready to fly. We'd heard Tuesday evening that there were two seats open on the DC-8 for the communications team on Wednesday, but as often happens in the field, plans change. For the first science flight, requests for extra seats from the …
By Susannah Darling NASA Headquarters Imagine, if you will, that you are driving to your favorite restaurant. The traffic is bad, so you use your GPS to find the best route. To get your current location, your phone or GPS listens to a satellite in the Earth's upper atmosphere. This satellite sends the GPS system …
by Ellen Gray / BOISE, IDAHO/ NASA, NOAA and university researchers are on an Earth expedition this summer studying fires and their smoke in the U.S. West. On July 23 from Boise, Idaho, the Fire Influence on Regional to Global Environments and Air Quality or FIREX-AQ, kicked off its study of fire smoke, what gases …
By Miles Hatfield NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center On Friday, June 28, NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory observed a solar prominence erupting off the limb, or edge, of the Sun. Solar prominences are loops of comparatively cold, dense solar material that become suspended in the Sun's super-hot outer atmosphere. Because they are colder and denser than …