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>> Dave Fahey, Co-Project Scientist: The Global Hawk is the world's most sophisticated unmanned
aircraft. NASA's acquisition of these aircraft are the first by a civilian agency. And so
that gives us an opportunity to show how we might use these for Earth science. This capability
is our future.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: GloPac is the Global Hawk Pacific Mission. GloPac
is the first scientific mission that is being flown on the Global Hawk aircraft. Before
this aircraft was acquired by NASA, it was used for actually military reconnaissance.
The Global Hawk is a fully autonomous aircraft. It doesn’t have any operators onboard. The
Global Hawk can fly to 65,000 feet, it has a wingspan that’s just a little longer than
the wingspan of a 737. A long wingspan allows you to get to higher altitudes. It can fly
over 30 hours continuously, and has a range of over ten thousand nautical miles. The Global
Hawk can take off from California and get all the way up to the high Arctic, plus it
can go all the way to the equator. And so it’s a really capable plane in terms of
duration and altitude. Much more than any manned aircraft we've ever used.
>> Dave Fahey, Co-Project Scientist: The value of the GloPac mission really is two-fold.
One, it’s showing how an unmanned aircraft of the capabilities of the Global Hawk can
be used for the benefit of Earth Science. This aircraft significantly expands our capability.
And second, we will gather some very important information from the atmosphere during GloPac,
to tell us about the distribution of gases and aerosols in the upper troposphere and
lower stratosphere. The upper troposphere and lower stratosphere is a very important
region of the atmosphere to study. One of the reasons is it's not very often studied
because of the difficulty of getting there. Satellites routinely sample that region but
not as, with the same kind of precision that you might like. So we'd like to do more process-based
studies in that region.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: There's a total of ten instruments aboard the Global
Hawk for the GloPac mission. These instruments break into two kinds; one is what we call
a remote sensor, which measures things far away. We have another type of instrument we
call an in situ instrument, and this measures the air that the aircraft is actually flying
through. They will measure particular gases like ozone, water, nitrous oxide, or laughing
gas, plus temperatures, pressures, winds and so forth.
>> Dave Fahey, Co-Project Scientist: The other thing is we’re very interested in validation
of the Aura satellite.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: The Aura satellite measures ozone depleting gases
and ozone. The second thing it does, is that Aura measures various gases involved with
air quality. So it’s a validation experiment. You have to make sure that your satellite
instruments are still measuring what you originally intended for them to measure.
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>> Chris Naftel, Global Hawk Project Manager: One of the great things about this aircraft
is it can be configured for a wide range of payloads. Payloads can be mounted underneath
the nose of the aircraft, under the belly of the aircraft, in the rear tail area. There's
several bays on the side of the aircraft that are available. On top, near the front of the
aircraft, under the radome.
>> Dave Fratello, Global Hawk Payload Manager: So on the airplane itself, we've identified
over 14 different compartments that are available for payloads. We've added six Iridium links
for global payload communication. There's also four on there for the aircraft command
and control. So we're actually carrying 10 Iridium systems on the airplane. Iridium is
an array of satellites. You can be anywhere on the Earth and you're within Iridium coverage
24-7. And so it's a great way for us to talk to the airplane and get downlink data from
the aircraft no matter where it is in the world.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: With most aircraft, the people are either sitting
in the aircraft and so they're watching their measurements as the airplane is flying through
certain air, or they're on the ground, and you don't see your data until after the plane
has landed. With the Global Hawk, though, everybody's sitting in a room called the Global
Hawk Operations Center, and you're viewing your data as it's being measured. So you get
to see your data in real time.
>> Dave Fratello, Global Hawk Payload Manager: Well, the GHOC, our Global Hawk Operations
Center, it's uniquely divided into two rooms. We've got the flight operations group in the
front. In the back room we have a fully independent capability for our payload scientists. So
we've got 14 workstations there. Each one dedicated to supporting an individual instrument.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: And we have all the instrument operators sitting
in this back room, they can talk to their instruments and make subtle corrections to
the computer programming of the instrument, or they can send it in to a different sampling
mode. So it's really an interactive process now. So it's a new way of doing science.
>> Phil Hall, Global Hawk Pilot: When we were controlling the NASA Global Hawk, it?s a whole
different challenge. It's more like being a cross between an air traffic controller
and pilot because you have this birds-eye view of the aircraft. It's a very sort of
a disconnected experience. We have to really focus on where it is, how it's going to react.
When I give it commands how long is it going to take. It's a lot of the basic airmanship,
but the hand-eye coordination is a lot different. It's mouse-screen coordination
>> Delewis Porter, Global Hawk Pilot: If you're an airplane pilot, then to think the possibility
of leaving that and start flying an airplane that's remotely controlled and using a mouse
and a keyboard, that's a big paradigm shift. But, as I got more and more involved in it
and started to search it out and realizing the potential of the Global Hawk aircraft
and its impact on the science world, I became more and more enamored with it.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: The GloPac mission is really a partnership of
a number of federal agencies and private industries, and universities. NASA is the one who owns
and operates these planes. But that's a partnership with both NOAA, the National Oceanographic
and Atmospheric Administration, and Northrup Grumman, the people who have built these planes.
>> Dave Fahey, Co-Project Scientist: The GloPac mission is a great example of the collaboration
between NASA and NOAA. Both agencies share an interest in the future of unmanned aircraft
for their particular program. And those of us in the GloPac mission see ourselves as
early adopters. And it’s very clear already that a success of this aircraft will have
a lot of ramifications because people?’ imaginations will be engaged as to what else
we could do now that we’ve demonstrated for the first time that putting scientific
instruments onboard and taking it far away from home is a good idea and can be done in
a successful way.
>> Paul Newman, Co-Project Scientist: I really think that this is really a historic occasion
for us. It's because we're on the cusp of something new. We're on the cusp of using
a plane that's a basically a satellite as well as a plane. We can venture out into the
regions where a lot of the weather in the United States forms but is so remote from
us that we can't get to it. And so that information is now going to be used to improve forecasts,
it'll be used to improve our policies towards air quality and climate change and ozone depletion.
It's a new way of doing things for us. And I think that's what makes you think that we're
really doing something exciting and new and historic.
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