Thanks to the dedicated work of the NASA Langley Airworthiness and Safety Review Board, SWESARR was cleared to fly Friday afternoon (November 30), and was able to conduct its maiden flight on Saturday December 1, 2018. The flight took place around the Grand Junction airport, and lasted just over 2 hours. During that time, the radar collected data at 1500, 2000, and 3000 meters above ground level (AGL) in various radar operation modes.
First flight went as expected with minor issues to tackle, verifying the instrument operation, and tweaking parameters. At all times beyond 10,000 feet MSL the crew used additional O2, per NASA regulations. At any given moment, there was always a lot to do for the three qualified non-crew members (a.k.a. the scientists and engineers).
After the first flight, the team got the data off the computer and started processing the hours of data that were collected. Data analysis continued on Sunday, to take a hard look at the data quality and instrument performance. The analysis will continue when the team is back at Goddard, but all indications are positive.
The hard efforts of two team members, Rafael Rincon in the field, and Tobias Bollian at Goddard, are producing good results as the first images from SWESARR radar start to come in. The team is analyzing the images to tweak the instrument parameters to achieve best image quality.