“Cameras on the International Space Station captured views of Hurricane Lane churning in the Pacific Ocean August 22 as it flew 254 miles south of the Hawaiian Islands at 12:47 p.m. EDT. At the time of the station’s pass, Lane was a major hurricane packing winds of 155 miles an hour moving west-northwest on a track that would bring the storm close to or over the islands between Wednesday and Saturday. Hurricane warnings and watches were posted by the Central Pacific Hurricane Center in Honolulu for the entire island chain.”
“ESA’s Earth Explorer Aeolus satellite lifted off on a Vega rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, at 21:20 GMT (23:20 CEST, 18:20 local time) on 22 August 2018. Aeolus carries one of the most sophisticated instruments ever to be put into orbit. The first of its kind, the Aladin instrument includes revolutionary laser technology to generate pulses of ultraviolet light that are beamed down into the atmosphere to profile the world’s winds – a completely new approach to measuring the wind from space. By profiling the lowermost 30 km of the atmosphere, Aeolus will give scientists global information on the speed of the wind in near-real time. This will improve our understanding of how wind, pressure, temperature and humidity are interlinked. This new mission will also provide insight into how the wind influences the exchange of heat and moisture between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere. These aspects are important for understanding climate change. As well as advancing science and improving weather forecasts, data from Aeolus will be used in air-quality models to improve forecasts of dust and other airborne particles that affect public health.”
“For centuries, a massive store of carbon has been locked underground in the Arctic’s permanently frozen soil known as permafrost. As Earth’s climate continues to warm, that carbon has begun to leach into the atmosphere, the result of microbes waking up and digesting once-frozen organic materials.
A new NASA-funded study focuses on a mechanism that could accelerate the release of this atmospheric carbon, the result of thermokarst lakes. These lakes form when thawing permafrost causes the ground to slump, creating a depression that collects rain and snowmelt and perpetuates a cycle of further permafrost thaw.”
“A project jointly funded by NASA and the National Science Foundation is heading west from Seattle, straight for the twilight zone. Using two research vessels, the Export Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing (EXPORTS) oceanographic campaign will study the fates and carbon cycle impacts of microscopic underwater organisms.
The large multidisciplinary team, including members from more than 20 different research institutions, is accompanied by advanced underwater robotics and other instruments on a month-long campaign to study the secret lives of tiny organisms called phytoplankton, and the animals that eat them. These organisms can have a large impact on Earth’s carbon cycle, storing carbon dioxide in a part of the ocean known as the twilight zone, between 650 and 3300 feet below the surface.”
Music: Brain Machine by George Arnas [PRS] and Anticipating Rain by Samuel Smith [PRS]
Video Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Kathryn Mersmann
“NASA’s remotely-piloted Ikhana aircraft, based at the agency’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, successfully flew its first mission in the National Airspace System without a safety chase aircraft. This historic flight moves the United States one step closer to normalizing unmanned aircraft operations in the airspace used by commercial and private pilots.
Flying these large remotely-piloted aircraft over the United States opens the doors to all types of services, from monitoring and fighting forest fires, to providing new emergency search and rescue operations. The technology in this aircraft could, at some point, be scaled down for use in other general aviation aircraft.
Flights of large craft like Ikhana, have traditionally required a safety chase aircraft to follow the unmanned aircraft as it travels through the same airspace used by commercial aircraft. The Ikhana flew in accordance with the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Technical Standard Order 211 — Detect and Avoid Systems — and Technical Standard Order 212 — Air-to-Air Radar for Traffic Surveillance.
The FAA granted NASA special permission to conduct this flight under the authority of a Certificate of Waiver or Authorization on March 30. The certificate permitted Ikhana’s pilot to rely on the latest Detect and Avoid technology, enabling the remote pilot on the ground to see and avoid other aircraft during the flight.
NASA successfully worked with its industry partners to develop a standard for Detect and Avoid technologies, complied with the requirements of the FAA Technical Standard Orders, and garnered flight approval from the FAA.
The Ikhana aircraft was equipped with detect and avoid technologies, including an airborne radar developed by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc., a Honeywell Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, a Detect and Avoid Fusion Tracker, and an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast capability – a surveillance technology where the aircraft determines its position via satellite navigation and periodically broadcasts this information so other aircraft can track it.”
“Two decades of planetary change are available to explore in NASA’s Worldview. Detailed views of volcanoes fuming, hurricanes flooding, dams being built, and wildfires sweeping across landscapes are just some of the data accessible. Worldview users can even create data animations at the touch of a button and easily share imagery, giving NASA’s worldwide audience the ability to interactively view their world their way and interactively explore almost 20 years of planetary change.”
Credits Music: Natural Time Cycles by Laurent Dury
Credits Video: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Lauren Ward
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