2008 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

Mind” in Baltimore, Maryland, an event
to showcase creative problem-solving
opportunities in a K-12 student competition
forum. The NSERC booth, which included a
large model of the DC-8, introduced these
students to the Airborne Science Program
research and aircraft.
Figure 47
Summer cadets for the Royal Canadian Air
Force line up to tour NASA’s DC-8 while
deployed at the 4 Wing Base in Cold Lake,
Alberta, July 2008.
television station and newspaper, as well as at
the national level by USA Today and United
Press International. In addition, a documentary
on the wildfires and the role of the Ikhana
support in the wildfire mapping is currently
being developed by the Discovery Channel.
Education & Outreach
The Program continues to be an active
participant in national conferences and
workshops, such as those conducted by the
AGU, AIAA, and the AUVSI annual Unmanned
Systems Conference. Our Airborne Science
and Technology Lab at NASA Ames continues
to develop high-quality informational handouts
and displays to communicate the goals,
capabilities, and resources of the program for
use at these conferences.
Much of the program’s educational outreach
activities are managed by the National
Suborbital Education and Research Center
(NSERC) at the University of North Dakota
(UND). NSERC staff and faculty had a booth
at the youth conference “Odyssey of the
In September 2008, NSERC participated
in the Salute to Youth event at the DAOF
hangar in Palmdale, CA. This event invited
local-area 9th graders to the hangar to
view the DC-8 and SOFIA. Students were
also able to view the DC-8 on the ramp
as it was being prepared for departure
on a mission. NSERC also had a video
presentation of the DC-8 during the
ARCTAS campaign to draw attention to
how the DC-8 is utilized as a research
aircraft.
NSERC has also funded graduate student
research and promoted the use of DC-
8 mission data for this research. For
example, a UND graduate student used
data collected onboard the DC-8 during
the INTEX-B mission for her thesis titled, “A
Study of Asian Dust Events using Surface,
Satellite, and Aircraft Measurements during
INTEX-B”. This student, funded with an
NSERC fellowship, successfully defended
this thesis to earn her Master of Science
from the Department of Atmospheric
Sciences in May 2008.
During 2008, NSERC also laid the
foundation for the first student mission
aboard the DC-8. This mission, called
the Student Airborne Research Program
(SARP), will take place for six weeks during
the summer of 2009. The primary goal
of the SARP mission is to motivate and
strengthen the nation’s future workforce in
Earth system science and related fields. The
program will give students the opportunity
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