William Atkins
Friday, 16 January 2009 00:46
Science -
Climate
Page 2 of 3
Michael Freilich, who is the director of the NASA Earth Science Division, stated,
“The Global Hawks will provide superb new measurement possibilities for our climate science and applications programs."
Frelilich adds, "
This collaboration is a model for NASA's wide-ranging Earth-observation activities to advance our understanding of Earth as an integrated system, which are critical to developing responses to environmental change here and around the world."
The first use by NASA for the Global Hawk aircraft will be a program called "Global Hawk Pacific 2009."
For this project, the aircraft will fly missions over the Pacific and Arctic regions during the late spring and early summer months of 2009 in order to collect atmospheric data of the Earth’s atmosphere in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere.
The Global Hawk aircraft contains Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), which is a high-resolution system that can see through cloud cover, sandstorms, and other such phenomenon.
It also contains Electro-Optical/Infrared (EO/IR) imagery, which provides up to 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometers) of surface area per day.
In fact, the NASA article states,
“If a Global Hawk were flown out from San Francisco, it would be able to operate in Maine for 24 hours, observe a 230 X 230 mile (370 x 370 kilometer) grid, and then fly back home.”
Page three concludes the story with additional information on the Global Hawk.
