 Droplet Measurement Technologies participated in NASA's
Global Hawk Pacific Mission. The campaign, dubbed GloPac, involved sending a remote-controlled Global Hawk plane over the Pacific Ocean and Arctic regions to gather data about the troposphere and stratosphere.
NASA's Global Hawk — Photo Courtesy of NASA Dryden
Global Hawks have been used by the U.S. Air Force for surveillance. However, the GloPac campaign was the first time that a Global Hawk had been used for scientific research. The plane can fly unmanned for up to 30 hours at altitudes of 60,000 feet, making it an ideal vehicle for gathering data about the earth's atmosphere.
DMT Senior Scientists Bruce Gandrud and David Thomson worked closely on the GloPac campaign. Thomson and Gandrud modified a DMT Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer (UHSAS) so it could be outfitted on the Global Hawk.
 DMT Scientists Bruce Gandrud (left) and David Thomson (right) work on the Ultra-High Sensitivity Aerosol Spectrometer
— Photo Courtesy of NASA Dryden
The UHSAS is designed to measure atmospheric particles as small as 60 nm, or about 0.1% the width of a human hair. On the Global Hawk, the instrument had to work under some unconventional operating conditions. First, since space on the aircraft was in high demand, the UHSAS shared its sample inlet with another instrument. But more importantly, since the Global Hawk is an unmanned aircraft, the UHSAS needed to communicate with control centers on the ground. Thomson therefore added special software to enable such remote communication. This software allowed the instrument to relay information about its status and receive a limited set of commands.
All of the Global Hawk research instruments had to communicate this kind of operational information remotely. However, only some of the instruments were designed to communicate research data real-time to the ground. The UHSAS was one of these. To transmit research data, Thomson and Gandrud implemented several data paths, using both the aircraft's Iridium link and the Ku satellite line. After data collected by the UHSAS and other Global Hawk instruments was received on the ground, NASA transmitted it across the internet via a password-protected website. This system enabled scientists across the globe to see the data instantaneously.
Click here to see a press release from NASA and more information about the GloPac plane.
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