Page 10 - Aerotech News and Review, July 20 2018

Student science program celebrates 10th year
Twenty-eight undergraduate students are participating in an eight-week NASA airborne science program field experi- ence designed to immerse them in the agency’s Earth Science research.
Embarking on its tenth year, NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program, provides a unique opportunity for un- dergraduate students majoring in the sciences, mathematics and engineering to participate in all aspects of a NASA Airborne Science research campaign. Flying aboard NASA’s DC-8 airborne laboratory, students will sample and measure atmospheric gases to study pol- lution and air quality in the Los Angeles basin and in California’s Central Valley.
Students will also use remote sens- ing instruments on NASA’s ER-2 to study drought, fire burn scars and debris flows in Southern California and ocean biology along the California coast. In addition to airborne data collection, students will take measurements at field sites near Santa Barbara, Sequoia National Forest, and the Salton Sea. These ground-based measurements will be used for calibration and validation of measurements taken by the aircraft teams and will also serve as comple- mentary data set for students to use for their individual research projects.
SARP participants are given a rare behind-the-scenes look at the instru- ment installation, flight planning and scientific data collection that is the basis
use data gathered by SARP participants during the previous nine years of the program to compare with current ob- servations.
At the conclusion of the program, each student will deliver a final presen- tation on his or her results and conclu- sions in front of an audience of NASA scientists, university faculty members and their fellow SARP students. Many students have gone on to present their
SARP research projects at national con- ferences, frequently at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Students participating in the 2018 SARP represent 28 different colleges and universities from 20 different states across the country. They were competi- tively selected based on their outstand- ing academic performance, future career
See NASA, Page 11
of every successful Earth Science air- borne campaign carried out by NASA. These campaigns play a pivotal role in the acquisition of process-oriented knowledge about the Earth system, as well as calibration and validation of NASA’s space-borne Earth observa- tions, remote sensing measurements and high-resolution imagery for Earth system science.
SARP began June 18 at the Arm- strong Flight Research Center Building 703 in Palmdale, Calif., with lectures by university faculty members, NASA scientists and NASA program manag- ers. The students were scheduled to fly onboard the DC-8 on three flights dur-
NASA photograph
ing the week of June 25.
They will overfly dairies and oil
fields in the San Joaquin Valley, and will sample the atmosphere in the Los Angeles basin, Santa Barbara Channel, and the Salton Sea at altitudes as low as 1,000 feet in order to collect air samples and measure atmospheric gases such as methane, carbon dioxide, carbon mon- oxide, nitrogen oxides, and ozone in- flight.
The final six weeks of the program will take place at the University of California, Irvine where students will analyze and interpret the data they col- lected onboard the aircraft. In addition to the new data collected, students can
NASA photograph by Megan Schill
Mara Nutt, a geology student at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., connects empty canisters used to collect whole air samples onboard the NASA DC-8 at the Armstrong Flight Research Center. Students in SARP are divided into four groups that are each headed by a different university professor from universities around the country.
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