March 5, 2007
AIRBORNE SCIENCE
IN THE CLASSROOM: THE NEXT-BEST THING TO BEING THERE
It
was early in the fall semester,
and to University
of Utah
meteorologist Ed
Zipser, it was the perfect day to be teaching a graduate course in
tropical
meteorology.
Zipser had just returned from the NASA African Monsoon
Multidisciplinary
Analysis - or NAMMA - field campaign based in the Cape Verde Islands, off
the west coast of Africa.
Zipser was chief
scientist for the NAMMA mission.
NASA's
DC-8 Airborne Laboratory
was still conducting NAMMA research missions, probing an easterly
atmospheric
wave off the African continent. These easterly waves are storm systems
that
occasionally develop into tropical cyclones, and the main purpose of
NAMMA was
to find out the differences between the developing and non-developing
waves.
Armed
with a notebook computer and
an Internet connection, Zipser effortlessly immersed students in the
research
activity. Through live displays of the DC-8's position fused with
weather
imagery and other meteorological essentials, students were able to view
exactly
what was unfolding five or six time zones away. They saw the same
displays of
satellite images and locations of lightning strikes that researchers
aboard the
DC-8 and in the operations center on the Cape Verdes
were seeing. Even better, they were able to interact with those
researchers via
live text messaging.
"Why are you turning here?" was a simple question to get the
conversation rolling between Utah
and Africa. With
Zipser guiding the students through the
activity, they soon managed to engage in the conversation.
The simplicity of the exercise's execution and the affordable cost for
student
participation were made possible through the Earth Science Capabilities
Demonstration project at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards
Air
Force Base, Calif. Researchers in Dryden's Suborbital Telepresence
subproject,
known as Over-the-Horizon Networks, managed the network connectivity to
and
from the aircraft and utilized the REVEAL – Research
Environment for Vehicle Embedded
Analysis – system to provide aircraft status and other
measured parameters.
Collaborating
partners at Marshall
Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., added
other types of
information and made all of it accessible to the NAMMA research team in
a
package called the Real Time Mission Monitor. The monitor integrated
satellite
and radar imagery, lightning observations, weather model predictions
and other
data sets with aircraft navigation data and other information from
onboard
instruments. All of this was viewable in three-dimensional space and
time with
the user-friendly Google Earth virtual globe.
"The development of the Real Time Mission Monitor as a cooperative
effort
by Dryden and Marshall was a major step forward in our capabilities for
doing
real-time monitoring and direction of missions," Zipser said. "This is
a true achievement that required a marriage of technology and science."
The success of the effort came as no surprise to Larry Freudinger,
project lead
at Dryden for the Suborbital Telepresence team that created the REVEAL
data
system in order to support the evolution of airborne science sensor
webs.
"Dr. Zipser's classroom is a milestone that demonstrates sustainable
benefits derived from effective network communications with airborne
platforms," Freudinger said. "As sensor Web technologies mature, the
network becomes the instrument by which many students and researchers
observe
and learn. This really is just the beginning."
For more information and images, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/namma.html
##
Contact:
Beth Hagenauer
NASA
Dryden Flight Research Center
661-276-7960
beth.hagenauer@mail.dfrc.nasa.gov
This text is
derived from:
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/namma.html
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