Unpredictable turns, but still optimistic.

We’re now chest-deep into the numbers. Everyone participating in this study can confidently agree that science doesn’t always work out like you think it will, as made evident by our premature landing in the second research flight on the DC-8 last Friday. Several “bumps” and a tear in the left wing indicated that we may have possibly hit two birds when flying at 1000 feet over California’s central valley, causing us to abandon flight plans and head back to Palmdale. Better safe than sorry. However, this meant that the flight lines over Monterey Bay were no longer happening. It’s true—things just don’t always work out the way you originally plan. Science isn’t always pretty. But, you learn to deal with what you have. You have no other choice.

Fortunately, we were able to obtain adequate data over Monterey Bay on the Wednesday flight, despite the heavy cloud cover over the southwestern half of the bay. We were originally skeptic of the amount of data we were going to have to work with, but after looking at the numbers and images the following days, we certainly have our hands full. My project partner and I have about 32,000 rows of numbers to go through next week to constrain an “atmospheric correction” for all of the MASTER data, and I suspect the other Monterey Bay projects have a similar workload.

We’re extremely lucky to have such an abundance of data to work with just days after the flights occurred, in contrast with campaigns in the past that weren’t able to see any numbers for weeks after the flights were completed. And what’s crazy is that the majority of us are working with computer programs and even certain scientific concepts we’ve never had experience with before, but I suppose that’s what builds a good scientist—attacking any kind of problem from any angle regardless of past experience, and making the best of the resources you’re given to answer an important and complex question. It’ll be interesting to see what this next week brings, and hopefully my laptop will survive the ride...

SARP Prepares for Second Science Flight - Pre-flight Brief July 24, 2009

It's about 10 am PDT and we are sitting in the Airborne Science Lab at DAOF in Palmdale, CA, preparing for the second SARP flight on board the DC-8 flying laboratory.

The flight plan has been adjusted slightly from the July 22 flight plan - instead of attempting four overflights of Monterey Bay the new plan is to do three overflights. Additionally, the DC-8 pilots have decided they need to adjust the way points slightly to guarantee that the overflight of the almond orchard is done exactly in line with what is needed to support ground-based measurements. In the previous flight on July 22, there was some in-flight adjusting between the waypoints that caused this line to be missed.

For this flight, the agriculture team will be on board assisting in operating the MASTER instrument. Out in the field is the gas sampling team. This field team should see us fly right over head as we conduct our low-level flights (1,000 feet) collecting gas samples with the WAS to support thier field gas sampling effort.

SARP First Science Flight a Success!

The first science flight to collected data for the SARP mission was a success. The only compromise the DC-8 pilots had to make - based on input from our mission meteorologist and the MASTER operators - was to cut the four overflights at Monterey Bay to two due to cloud coverage. To compensate, the DC-8 pilots did two overflights of Morro Bay.


The first set of data collected was using the Whole Air Sampler (WAS) to collect dairy farm emissions over Central California at low altitude (1,000 feet).

Dr. Melissa Yang of UC Irvine assisted the SARP students with operating the WAS. Dr. Yang has found in her previous research that there are elevated emissions of ethanol being produced by dairy farm operations in the Central California Valley.

Remote sensing - using the MASTER instrument - of the almond orchards and cotton fields for the agriculture project was next on the list. We had two flight lines - one over each of these fields.

Unfortunately we found out after we landed that we were a few seconds off of our line for the almond orchard. It was important to be right in line because we had a ground-sampling group down in the field collecting ground-based data at the same time. It is very common to have ground-based data supporting the airborne-based data, but in this case our flight line was off by enough that we missed the area where the field group was. Luckily we have another flight Friday where we plan to do two overflights for each of the fields to make sure we get good data for the agriculture project.

Lastly, we did remote sensing of Monterey Bay using the MASTER instrument. Again, the original four flight lines had to be cut to two because of the presence of fog (seen in the upper portion of the picture above); but the two overflights we were able to do were right where they needed to be.

Google Earth shows us the actual flight track of the DC-8 for the July 22nd flight minus the first leg of low level flights (see previous blog for original flight plan).

SARP Prepares for First Science Flight!

It's 10:20 am PDT and we are currently relaxing in the Airborne Science Lab - located inside the Dryden Aircraft Operations Facility hangar - finalizing the flight plan for today's science flight.

The students are very excited as they browse through the flight track, which will take us from Palmdale, up north towards Sacramento, southwest to do some overflights of Monetery Bay, and then back south to Palmdale.

Doors close on the DC-8 at 11:10 am PDT and take-off is scheduled for 11:40 am PDT. First we will be flying at about 1,000 feet agl and collecting in-situ air samples of gas emissions from dairy farms using the UCI Whole Air Sampler. Then we'll climb to about 37,000 feet to begin collecting remote sensing data of algae blooms in Monterey Bay using the MASTER instrument. We'll also be flying at 13,000 feet to collect MASTER data of evapotranspiration processes of cotton fields and almond orchards.

Student Airborne Research Program Begins This Week!!!

Hello SARP!

NSERC has set up this blog to be used during the Student Airborne Research Program July 13 - August 13, 2009.

If you are a SARP student, please feel free to share your experiences as you engage in airborne science research on board NASA's DC-8.