NASA Earth science racks up frequent-flier miles in New Zealand skies

Since mid-September 2022, NASA-funded devices have been hitching rides on industrial plane and amassing environmental information over New Zealand. The collaboration with Air New Zealand is the primary recognized data-collecting partnership between a passenger airline and a NASA Earth science mission.

The brand new program is a part of NASA’s Cyclone World Navigation Satellite tv for pc System (CYGNSS) mission, which is a constellation of eight small satellites that gather information on the depth and path of storms and hurricanes. Flying in low-Earth orbit above the tropics, the CYGNSS satellites had been designed to measure wind speeds over the ocean by inspecting reflections of GPS alerts from uneven and calm water surfaces.

After the satellites had been launched in 2016, scientists discovered that CYGNSS expertise may additionally seize helpful measurements of wetlands, flood occasions, and soil moisture. That is the place the Air New Zealand partnership is available in. Attaching GPS radar receivers to commercial aircraft presents a brand new solution to observe options of wetlands and rivers which are typically hidden from view in visible-light imagery by thick vegetation.

“The airplane-mounted receiver was designed and supposed to be a next-generation model of the one that’s on CYGNSS,” mentioned Chris Ruf, CYGNSS principal investigator . “It is a nice alternative to start out exercising the brand new expertise and testing it to see how the info improves.”

The receiver mechanically activates and off with the takeoff and touchdown of a New Zealand Airways Q300 plane, which collects information for the size of the flight. After touchdown, the receivers transmit the observations to a server on the College of Auckland. Ruf’s crew on the College of Michigan can then log into that server from Ann Arbor to retrieve the info.

Because the plane traverses New Zealand, a few of its flight paths overlap with these of the CYGNSS satellites. These overlaps will present the crew with a wealth of information to make use of to validate and enhance CYNGSS satellite observations over land, mentioned Ruf. The extensively diverse New Zealand terrain additionally offers helpful comparability factors for information collected from comparable terrains all over the world. The receivers, which had been designed and examined on the College of Michigan, are light-weight and draw a small quantity of energy from the airplane, Ruf famous. The crew plans to maintain them put in for at the very least one yr.

This system is a partnership amongst NASA, the College of Michigan, Air New Zealand, the New Zealand Ministry of Enterprise, Innovation and Employment, the New Zealand House Company, and the College of Auckland. The Southwest Analysis Institute (SwRI) leads the event and integration of the CYGNSS microsatellites. The House Physics Analysis Laboratory on the College of Michigan School of Engineering leads the general mission execution, and its Local weather and House Sciences and Engineering division leads the science investigation. The Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate oversees the mission.