2008 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

Wallops, VA
Campaign
Cleveland, OH
Demo Flight
Wallops, VA
Demo Flight
Greenland
Campaign
base
Geostationary
Imaging
Fabry–Perot
Spectrometer/Yee
Laser Sounder
for Global
Measurements of
CO 2
/Abshire
Multi-functional Fiber
Laser Lidar (MFLL) for
Ice Sheet Topographic
Mapping/Dobbs
Glaciers and Ice Sheet
Interferometric Radar
(GISIR)/Jezek
Figure 37
ESTO Supported Instruments, Aircraft, and Sample Data.
measurements in the vicinity of Cleveland,
Ohio on the NASA Glenn Learjet 25. The
CO 2 Sounder is a technology development
effort to develop an instrument to enable
high accuracy (< 1 ppm) global maps of
CO 2 mixing ratios in lower troposphere, as
needed by the ASCENDS mission.
GISIR
The purpose of the Global Ice Sheet
Interferometric Radar (GISIR) is to develop
and test radars (150 Mhz & 450 MHz) and
algorithms for imaging the base of the polar
ice sheets, and to develop 3-D topography
of the glacial bed. Flights were conducted in
the Fall of 2007 and Summer of 2008 over
Greenland using both the P-3 and Twin Otter
to make 3-D topographic representations
of the basal properties of Greenland using
both interferometric and tomographic SAR
techniques.
Multi-functional Fiber Laser Lidar (MFLL) for
Ice Sheet Topographic Mapping
The MFLL implementation is a multifunctional
system capable of topographic
ranging, aerosol/clouds sensing, and
atmospheric profiling that promises a roughly
factor of ten reduction in size, mass, power,
cost, and development risk over existing
approaches. The MFLL was tested over
Wallops, Virginia using the NASA B-200
aircraft.
A total of approximately 50 flight hours were
flown in FY08 in support of ESTO technology
demonstrations.
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