1/11/2020 0 Comments My Day at NasaNASA’s Earth Venture Social in Palmdale, CA is an experience I will never forget! What started out as me, with a long-standing interest in NASA, space travel, and their continued cutting-edge science, scrolling randomly on their website and coming upon the chance to apply to attend a “NASA Social” turned into an incredible opportunity to get first-hand insight into NASA’s newest research endeavors and tour the aircraft they use to carry it out. The five new programs being launched in 2020 will take off via land, sea, and air to help us understand our world and how it is changing, along with the steps needed to help us evolve our perspective of the earth as we move into the future. Also, one of the best parts of these programs- they will all take place right here within the U.S.! First, our day began with the opportunity to be a part of the audience for a NASA TV Live broadcast where we got an overview of the five programs from each of their lead scientists. Starting from the east and working our way west, the first project to launch, which will be within the coming week, is IMPACTS– Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms. The main goal of this research, led by Lynn McMurdie, is to understand the organized small bands of snow within these large clouds and how they vary from storm to storm. ACTIVATE– Aerosol Cloud Meteorology Interactions Over the Western Atlantic Experiment – is the next project up, led by Armin Sorooshain. This research will target marine boundary layer clouds and how they effect global warming that our earth is facing today, making much needed data on this topic available to the international science community. Moving to the Midwest, DCOTSS, or Dynamics and Chemistry of the Summer Stratosphere led by Ken Bowman, will employ aircraft to fly high into the atmosphere to try to understand these strong storms that can penetrate the stratosphere, which contains the Earth’s ozone layer. Because of this, it is highly important to understand these storms now so we can keep their pollutants out, predict how it will change in the future, and get a grasp on how their mixing can distribute gases and particles across the globe. A little further south, DELTA-X led by Marc Simard will explore why some parts of the Mississippi River Delta are disappearing and others are not. Sea level rise is accounting for much of the shrinking of river deltas around the globe, so the sediment accumulation required to keep up would need to be much faster than the current rate. The goal of this mission is to guide and support restoration processes that will be take place in the future. Lastly, on the east coast, S-MODE, or Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment led by Thomas Farrar will work to research ocean eddies and their role in heat transport. Using airborne and oceanographic research vessels, the goal will be to understand how these eddies impact sea life and the environment, helping us to move forward with climate models. The second half of the day was dedicated to exploring and touring many of NASA’s research aircraft that are kept at the Armstrong Flight Research Center hangar in Palmdale, including their ER-2 high-altitude aircraft, King Air, Gulfstream C-20A and its UAVSAR radar, DC-8 flying laboratory, and, maybe most interestingly, SOFIA, their specialized flying astronomical telescope that has propelled space exploration since its beginning with NASA in 2010. We were able to talk with the Earth Science team members about the aircraft and the different probes and instruments being used in each of the new programs and ask them questions about the past and potential future missions these aircraft are involved in. All in all, it was a very informative and exciting day shared with many other NASA enthusiasts. This social educated and inspired me about the difference NASA is making to shape our world and the dedication they have to making it better for tomorrow!
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AuthorCourtney Golman Archives
September 2022
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