Latest flights and outlook

This morning Polar 5 and 6 took off really early. Scheduled take off was at 7:00 local time. The plan was to fly above the clouds and also at low altitude to do amongst other things some calibration patterns, albedo, cloud remote and in-situ measuring.

Flight under the clouds and above sea ice

Clouds near Svalbard

Unfortunately Polar 5 encountered too much icing and had to return to Longyearbyen after 3 hours. Polar 6 instead had a flight of more than 4 hours and returned succesfully.

Tomorrow, Polar 6 and Polarstern, which is passing Svalbard on the West, will have a first meeting. On Wednesday a joint flight of both aircraft to Polarstern is planned.

Polar 5 on a Satellite Mission

Today, Polar 5 started for a satellite mission having a date with Cloudsat and all the other satellite of the A-Train satellite constellation. Therefore, the flight plan had to be scheduled more precise then for other flights. The meeting was at 11:27 local time with about 1.5 hours flight time until the exact overpass. We aimed to follow the track for one hour having the meeting in the center of the leg. So everybody had to take the seat half an hour before start to guaranty no delay during the starting procedure. The training of the last flights helped and is morning Polar 5 needed only 20 min from starting the engines until take off.

Although we had beautiful sunny weather at the airport with high risk of getting sun burned, a lot of clouds where found on the satellite track.

First Ny Alesund Overpass

Another fish-eye photo taken from Polar 5 during the second research flight, where you might find some interesting detail. 

The Polar 6 view...

...standing on the ground, a longing view to the sky... it's Polar 5 taking off while the Polar 6 scientists still need to wait for their first research flight. Due to the technical problems with the aircraft we still need to be patient to get airborne. But this can always happen and in the meanwhile the time was used to optimize and calibrate the scientific instrumentation inside of Polar 6. Of course we want to be ready as soon as the aircraft is.

Today the spare part is supposed to arrive in Longyearbyen. Being lucky, the aircraft will be ready by saturday and if weather is good the first joint flight of P5 and P6 might happen...finally :-)

Survival Suits

During take-off and landing and also during low level flights, the survival suit has to be worn. In the case of an offshore emergency landing the suit protects the wearer from the cold and harsh sea. It is getting really warm inside these suits, therefore they aren't the first choice of clothing but they are important and necessary. Also everyone wearing it looks like an astronaut or an orange jet pilot. Some critics say you just look funny.

Second flight Polar5

Today was the second flight of Polar5. At the beginning of the flight we passed the Ny-Alesund. During the flight we had an  opportunity to observe glacier and different kind of clouds. Several dropsondes were launched during the flight providing the data. Almost everything works with the instruments on Polar5. The first flight of Polar6 is planned for Saturday.

Glacier in Arctic

Launching dropsonde

Find Polar5

Something for the C-Cluster ...