All went well during the 7 flights above St. Lawrence Island, St. Matthew Island, Barrow, and the other various places we flew over. Most of our flights were over sea ice, so they weren’t exactly the most scenic flights to go on (unless, of course, you are really into sea ice). Before we left, an article was run in the local paper. I’ll post some of my better pictures when I get a chance…
After some a few setbacks and delays, we finally left Wallops Island on Saturday afternoon to head to Fairbanks (via Spokane, Washington). Originally scheduled to leave earlier in the week, we had to wait for some equipment from Colorado to be installed at the last moment. Here is a summary of what has happened since….
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Looks like Europe will be going to the moon this July. According to this BBC article, an Ariane rocket will propel a spacecraft to space that will use an ion-thruster to make a long spiral-y trip to the moon. A spectrometer onboard will take measurements of the element composition of the moon to try to determine how the moon came about.
I’m glad that someone is interested in doing research on the moon still.. it’s a shame that the US isn’t really involved in any moon projects. It would be a good testbed for future trips planned to Mars, I think.
As of yesterday, we (mostly) finished the the install of our equipment on the P-3 in preparation for our flights in Alaska. We sucessfully tested the GPS rack, the INS, ATM2, ATM3, and (the new) ATM4. For a brief description of what our equipment does, read on…