Notes from the Field

Instrument Prep and ATom’s First Test Flight

July 22nd, 2016 by Christina Williamson

I’m Christina Williamson, a postdoctoral scientist at CIRES CU-Boulder/NOAA-ESRL interested in Atmospheric Aerosols, the small particles in the air that cause haze, and on which clouds are formed.

I’m working with a few colleagues from NOAA to take a suite of instruments on NASA’s ATom mission that will measure the number and size of particles in the air as we fly around the world. We’re interested in this because aerosols in the atmosphere affect how much of the energy from the sun is absorbed and how much is reflected back to space by clouds and by the aerosols themselves.

My research team in our lab at NOAA ESRL setting up our flight rack for ATom. From left to right, Frank Erdesz, engineer with CIRES/NOAA, Charles Brock, Principal Investigator from NOAA, Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, and Christina Williamson, research scientist with CIRES/NOAA. (Credit: Nick Wagner)

My research team in our lab at NOAA ESRL setting up our flight rack for ATom. From left to right, Frank Erdesz, engineer with CIRES/NOAA, Charles Brock, Principal Investigator from NOAA, Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, and Christina Williamson, research scientist with CIRES/NOAA. (Credit: Nick Wagner)

Over the past few weeks we’ve brought our instruments down from NOAA’s Earth-Science Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado to NASA Armstrong in California, integrated them onto the plane and tested how they perform while the plane is flying. We’re running five instruments, measuring aerosols in different size ranges, which, after modifying to optimize performance for ATom conditions, and testing in the lab, we put together in a flight rack. Everything we fly is secured in the rack with aircraft grade hardware so that it cannot shake loose or be propelled out during flight, and the rack is then screwed to the seat tracks of the plane.

Assembling the instrument rack in the lab at NASA Armstrong. From left to right, Frank Erdesz, engineer with CIRES/NOAA, Charles Brock, Principal Investigator from NOAA, Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, and Christina Williamson, research scientist with CIRES/NOAA. (Credit: Maximilian Dollner)

Assembling the instrument rack in the lab at NASA Armstrong. From left to right, Charles Brock, Principal Investigator from NOAA, Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, and Christina Williamson, research scientist with CIRES/NOAA. (Credit: Maximilian Dollner)

We sample aerosols in flight by pulling air in through an inlet tube that is mounted on a plate where the window would normally be. We plumbed this to our instruments taking care to route the flow to minimize the number of aerosol particles that get lost by sticking to the walls of the tubing on their way from outside to the instruments.

Instrument inlets (where air is pulled into the instruments inside for sampling) on the NASA DC-8. Ours is the curvy one third from the right. (Credit: NASA Armstrong)

Instrument inlets (where air is pulled into the instruments inside for sampling) on the NASA DC-8. Ours is the curvy one third from the right. (Credit: NASA Armstrong)

On the plane we tested the instrument set-up while it was still in the hangar, checking for leaks and that particles were being transmitted well, as well as other things like electrical connections and communications. I ran some calibrations to check that nothing had shifted in the instrument performance in the move from the lab. We also spend a good deal of time neatly tying down all of the cabling and plumbing, securing it to the rack and the body of the plane and making sure everything in the rack will hold fast during even the most turbulent of flights.

The AMP (aerosol microphysical processes) rack installed on the DC8. We run all 5 instruments from this monitor, and check the data as it comes in during the flights. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

The AMP (aerosol microphysical processes) rack installed on the DC8. We run all five instruments from this monitor, and check the data as it comes in during the flights. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

The AMP (aerosol microphysical processes) rack being integrated on the DC8. You can see there’s some work to be done neatening and tying down the cabling. The instruments on the top are two Nucleation Mode Aerosol Size Spectrometers (NMASSs), which measure aerosol size distributions between 3 and 60nm. Lower in the rack are two Ultra High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometers (UHSASs), which measure particles between 60 and 800nm, and a Laser Aerosol Spectrometer, getting the size distribution from 90nm up to 7.5μm. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

The AMP (aerosol microphysical processes) rack being integrated on the DC8. You can see there’s some work to be done neatening and tying down the cabling. The instruments on the top are two Nucleation Mode Aerosol Size Spectrometers (NMASSs), which measure aerosol size distributions between 3 and 60nm. Lower in the rack are two Ultra High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometers (UHSASs), which measure particles between 60 and 800nm, and a Laser Aerosol Spectrometer, getting the size distribution from 90nm up to 7.5μm. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

All this involved many days working on the plane in the hangar. Palmdale, where the Armstrong base is located, can get above 40C (104F) this time of year. The air-conditioning from the plane’s ground unit cannot quite compete with combination of heat from outside and from electrical scientific equipment operating inside (not to mention a lot of busy scientists and crew), so it gets pretty hot. We’re working often in the cramped spaces between two instruments, or a rack and the wall, or laying cabling and plumbing along the floor, so it’s hot, awkward and dirty work, but the excitement of working on the plane and seeing everything come together for the flights more than compensates for that.

The crew conducted a shakedown flight without scientists just to check that everything was integrated safely, and then we went up for out first test flight on July 12. This was my first time flying in a research plane. Some more experienced scientists delighted in telling me horror-stories of maneuvers and low-flying turbulence making people ill before we took off. I was nervous, mainly about how my instruments would perform, as there are controls for things like pressure and flow that I can’t test on the ground, and also because I didn’t want to embarrass myself by getting ill on the test flight.

Christina Williamson (i.e. me), research scientist with CIRES/NOAA boarding the DC-8 for our first test flight at NASA Armstrong. (Credit: Agnieszka Kupc)

Christina Williamson (i.e. me), research scientist with CIRES/NOAA boarding the DC-8 for our first test flight at NASA Armstrong. (Credit: Agnieszka Kupc)

We flew from the base out over the Pacific, then back inland over the LA-Basin and back to base. The ATom mission flights will be constantly profiling between about 0.2 and 12km (650 feet to 7 miles) altitude, so we did a lot of ascending and descending to check that the instruments can cope with it and to look at the fuel performance of the plane with this payload. To really test every instrument, the pilots did some really fast ascents and descents (for example, flow into the inlets is affected by the incline). I had to be up out of my seat testing some things on the instrument during part of this: the crew really weren’t joking when they said to hang on.

Our instruments behaved well, needing just one or two quick software fixes that I was able to implement as we flew, and I started to relax and enjoy the flight. We can stream video from cameras in the cockpit and one looking directly down below the plane, which is great. We also have a window by my seat, so I can look out.

Once over the Pacific and out of the LA-area high air traffic we dropped seriously low — had there been a whale breaching below I would have easily seen it. We also did some very low flying over the Central Valley, which produced interesting data and interesting views (although also a reasonable amount of turbulence).

Photo from the DC-8 flying low over the Pacific Ocean on the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

Photo from the DC-8 flying low over the Pacific Ocean on the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

During the flight we had to do some maneuvers. These are used to calibrate instruments measuring wind-speed. The crew advised us to sit down for these, and I’m glad I did, as some of them had my body weight almost out of the seat and pulling on the seatbelt. If you throw a small object in the air during one of the maneuvers you can watch it appear to hover as it falls under gravity but then you and the plane also move down away from it. It felt a bit like being in a roller coaster, and by the end of all the maneuvers I was glad to return to more normal flight. It can make you a little queasy, but just eating something or walking about the cabin afterwards really helps.

Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, monitoring data during the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

Agneiszka Kupc, research scientist with NOAA/University of Vienna, monitoring data during the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

The aircraft is noisy in flight, partly because there is less insulation on it than on a normal passenger plane, and partly because of all the pumps and fans etc. on our instruments. We therefore all wear headsets, which cancel background noise and enable us to communicate with other scientists and the crew. We get some bleed-over from the channel the pilots are on, which is quite fun.

Christina Williamson (yup, me again), research scientist with CIRES/NOAA on the DC-8 during the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

Christina Williamson (yup, me again), research scientist with CIRES/NOAA on the DC-8 during the first ATom test flight. (Credit: Christina Williamson)

I was quite surprised when we arrived back already, four hours of flight goes by so quickly when you’re operating instruments and concentrating on the science behind what you’re seeing compared to a passenger flight. It was a good feeling to have a successful flight under the belt, to see that the instruments worked as expected and that my body coped fine with the flying conditions. We have one more test-flight just before we take off for the mission-proper. I’m looking forward to it!

Christina Williamson blogs regularly about the ATom Mission and other adventures in atmospheric science at christinajwilliamson.wordpress.com and tweets as @chasingcloudsCW.

Take 78 percent nitrogen, 21 percent oxygen, 0.9 percent argon, 0.03 percent carbon dioxide – that’s 99.93 percent of the atmosphere. But the trace gases and airborne particles that make up that last approximately 0.07 percent are what NASA’s Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission is interested in.

ATom is a chemistry mission to study the movement and chemical processes that affect the top three greenhouse agents after carbon dioxide – methane, tropospheric ozone, and black carbon. In addition, it’s the first time scientists are going to do a comprehensive survey of over 200 gases and aerosol particles all over the world. And to do that a team of university and NASA scientists are going on a 26-day journey from pole to pole and back again.

NASA's DC-8 aircraft has intake valves on the window ports to suck in the air it's flying through. Credit: Michael Prather (UCI)

NASA’s DC-8 aircraft has intake valves on the window ports to suck in the air it’s flying through. Photo taken July 11 in Palmdale, California, before ATom’s first test flight. Credit: Michael Prather (UCI)

Over the next few weeks a handful of ATom scientists will be blogging about their around-the-world journey on NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory – a plane the size of a midsize commercial airliner stuffed with 22 scientific instruments for sampling the air. They’ll collect data that not only shows where these hundreds of trace gases are hanging out and where they’re going, but also how they interact with each other – creating new compounds or destroying others, like methane, and effectively removing them from the atmosphere. Taken together, the data will give the science community a better understanding of how these gases, many of which are pollutants, affect global climate change.

The majority of the air sampled will be over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. This summer’s trip will be the first of four deployments, one in each season over the next three years.

To learn more about ATom’s science goals and its ten-leg flight path, stay tuned.