Terra Daily: The first flight of NASA's hurricane airborne research mission is scheduled to take off from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on Tuesday, Aug. 17. NASA's DC-8 research aircraft will be making a planned five-hour flight along the Gulf Coast from western Florida to Louisiana primarily as a practice run for the many scientific instruments aboard.Mission scientists, instrument teams, flight crew and support personnel gathered in Fort Lauderdale this weekend to begin planning the six-week Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes mission, or GRIP. NASA's DC-8, the largest of NASA's three aircraft taking part in the mission, is based at the Fort Lauderdale airport.
…The target for Tuesday's "shakedown" flight is the remnants of Tropical Depression 5, a poorly organized storm system whose center is currently hugging the coasts of Mississippi and Louisiana and moving westward.
While forecasters do not expect this storm system to strengthen significantly before it reaches landfall in Louisiana, the system offers the DC-8's seven instrument teams an opportunity to try out their equipment on possible convective storms….
The eyewall of Hurricane Katrina in 2005
No comments:
Post a Comment