NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

NASA's ER-2 high-altitude research aircraft wrapped up the fall 2013 series of flights during the first week in December for the Hyperspectral Infrared Imager, or HyspIRI, airborne campaign.

NASA's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel airborne mission known as HS3 wrapped up for the 2013 Atlantic Ocean hurricane season at the end of September, and had several highlights. HS3 will return to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., for the 2014 Atlantic hurricane season.

Researchers with NASA's Operation IceBridge kicked off this year's Antarctic campaign with three consecutive science flights.

The IceBridge mission will conduct daily survey flights through Nov. 26 on a NASA P-3 research aircraft from a base of operations at McMurdo Station.

NASA's DC-8 Flying Laboratory will soon undergo "C Check" major maintenance as part of the aircraft’s new Low Utilization Maintenance Plan.

Several NASA Airborne Science aircraft that were deployed for science missions during the summer of 2013 to study subjects from hurricane formation to forest fires have returned to their home bases at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center and the Dryden Aircraft Operations Center in Southern California.

Students and researchers from Millersville University, Penn State University and NASA are collaborating at Smith Point, one of the DISCOVER-AQ ground stations near Houston, Texas.

The remnants of the once-tropical-storm Gabrielle continued to struggle near the Bahamas as NASA's HS3 mission investigated.

A study using data primarily from NASA's Operation IceBridge has found a canyon in the bedrock beneath Greenland's ice sheet that is longer than the Grand Canyon.

A multi-year airborne science mission is on its way to Texas to help scientists better understand how to measure and forecast air quality from space.

A dozen teachers from across the country came to Southern California for a 10-day Airborne Research Experience for Educators workshop at NASA Dryden.

A new Doppler radar takes flight on this summer's HS3 mission.

NASA is investigating the loss of a small unpiloted aircraft over the Arctic Ocean Friday, July 26, while it conducted research on sea ice. The Sensor Integrated Environmental Remote Research Aircraft (SIERRA) was about four hours into a planned six-hour flight when it experienced a problem that caused it to lose altitude and crash in the ocean. The incident occurred at 6:15 p.m. AKDT (10:15 p.m. EDT).

The flight originated from Oliktok Point, off the northern coast of Alaska. The crash site is extremely remote, about 40 miles farther north in the Beaufort Sea. No one on the ground was injured. Environmental impacts at the crash site are expected to be minimal because of the aircraft’s small size. At the time, SIERRA had less than six gallons of fuel and oil aboard. A mishap investigation is underway.

The aircraft was one of three unmanned aerial vehicles taking part in a science experiment called the Marginal Ice Zone Observations and Processes Experiment (MIZOPEX). Mission objectives were to probe the ocean's role in recent declines in Arctic sea ice using a sophisticated set of radars and other instruments.

SIERRA was a medium-class, unmanned aircraft system with a wingspan of 20 feet and a weight of 400 pounds. It was designed to perform remote sensing and atmospheric sampling missions in isolated and often inaccessible regions, such as over mountain ranges, the open ocean, or the Arctic and Antarctic regions. NASA acquired SIERRA from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in 2006 and conducted its first mission surveying sea ice off the coast of Svalbard, Norway, in 2009. The vehicle was valued at $250,000.

For more information about SIERRA, visit:

http://airbornescience.nasa.gov/aircraft/SIERRA

For more information about the MIZOPEX mission, visit:

http://ccar.colorado.edu/mizopex/index.html

Ruth Marlaire

Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.

650-604-4709

ruth.marlaire@nasa.gov

J.D. Harrington

Headquarters, Washington           

202-358-5241

j.d.harrington@nasa.gov

This week a European Earth-observing satellite confirmed that a large iceberg broke off of Pine Island Glacier, one of Antarctica's largest and fastest moving ice streams. The rift that led to the new iceberg was discovered in October 2011 during NASA's Operation IceBridge flights over the continent.