Professor Donald Blake of the University of
California—Irvine outlines procedures for installation of air canister racks on
NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory to students participating in NASA's 2014 Student
Airborne Research Program.
Thirty-two undergraduate students from a like number of colleges and
universities are participating in an eight-week NASA Airborne Science Program
field experience designed to immerse them in the agency's Earth Science
research.
Jonathan Hemingway, an applied meteorology and
computational mathematics major at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in
Florida, assists in installation of the Whole Air Sampler instrument on NASA's
DC-8 flying laboratory.
Josette Marrero, a Ph.D. candidate in the
Rowland-Blake Lab at UC Irvine, explains the installation of the Whole Air
Sampler on board NASA's DC-8 to Student Airborne Research Program
participants.
Caleb Sykora-Bodie, an environmental geoscience and
geography major at Slippery Rock University, connects lines during installation
of the Whole Air Sampler instrument for the SARP flights.
Krystal Vasquez, a chemistry major at the
University of California, Riverside, assists in the installation of the Whole
Air Sampler instrument on NASA's DC-8 flying laboratory.
Flying aboard NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory, students will measure
pollution, aerosols (small particles suspended in the atmosphere) and air
quality in the Los Angeles basin and California’s central valley. They will also
use remote sensing instruments to study forest ecology in the Sierra Nevada and
ocean biology along the California coast.
Now in its sixth year, NASA's Student Airborne Research Program (SARP)
provides a unique opportunity for undergraduate students majoring in the
sciences, mathematics and engineering to participate in all aspects of a NASA
Airborne Science research campaign.
SARP participants are given a rare behind-the-scenes look at the instrument
installation, flight planning and scientific data collection that is the basis
of every successful NASA Earth Science airborne campaign. These campaigns play a
pivotal role in the acquisition of process-oriented knowledge about the Earth
system, as well as calibration of NASA's space-borne Earth observation
instruments, validation of remote sensing measurements and high-resolution
imagery for Earth system science.
SARP began June 16 at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center's facility in
Palmdale, California, with lectures by university faculty members, NASA
scientists and NASA program managers. The students will then be aboard the DC-8
on five flights during the week of June 23. They will acquire multi-spectral
images of kelp beds in the Santa Barbara Channel and of forests in the Sierra
Nevada.
In addition, the students will fly over dairies and oil fields in the San
Joaquin Valley, parts of the Los Angeles basin and the Salton Sea at altitudes
as low as 1,000 feet in order to collect air samples, measure aerosols and air
quality. During the final flight, half of the students will be in the field
taking ground validation or complementary measurements while the DC-8 flies
overhead.
The final six weeks of the program will take place at the University of
California, Irvine where students will analyze and interpret the data they
collected from science instruments on the aircraft. At the conclusion of the
program, the students will each deliver final presentations about their results
and conclusions in front of an audience of NASA scientists and administrators,
university faculty members and their fellow SARP students. In past summers, many
students have gone on to present their SARP research projects at national
conferences.
Students participating in the 2014 SARP represent 32 different colleges and
universities from across the United States. They were competitively selected
based on their outstanding academic performance, future career plans and
interest in the Earth System Science.
The Student Airborne Research Program is one of NASA's tools to expose future
scientists to the Earth Science missions that support environmental studies and
the testing and development of new instruments and future satellite mission
concepts. The program's goal is to stimulate interest in NASA's Earth Science
research and aid in the recruitment and training of the next generation of
scientists and engineers, many of whom will be getting their first hands-on
research experience during this program.
NASA monitors Earth's vital signs from land, air and space with a fleet of
satellites and ambitious airborne and ground-based observation campaigns. NASA
develops new ways to observe and study Earth's interconnected natural systems
with long-term data records and computer analysis tools to better see how our
planet is changing. The agency shares this unique knowledge with the global
community and works with institutions in the United States and around the world
that contribute to understanding and protecting our home planet.
SARP is managed by NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, California,
through the National Suborbital Education and Research Center (NSERC) at the
University of North Dakota. As part of the Ames Cooperative for Research in
Earth Science and Technology, NSERC receives funding and support from NASA’s
Earth Science Division.
For additional information about SARP, visit:
View video about the 2013 SARP experience:
For more about NASA's Earth science activities in 2014, visit:
For more on NASA's Airborne Science Program, visit:
For additional information about NASA's DC-8, visit:
NASA / NSERC photos by Jane
Peterson
NASA
Guillermo Gonzalo Sánchez Achutegui
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