ARA working with NASA over Arizona, California and Mexico
May 17, 2013 in News
Hot on the tail of a trip to the arctic Directflight’s ARA team have taken the aircraft to the USA to work in the deserts of Arizona. The aircraft will be based in Tucson Arizona for a month, flying over the southern USA, Mexico and the Gulf of California.
SALSTICE
The campaign, titled SALSTICE, is a follow on campaign to the JAIVEx/IASI campaign of 2007 that was based out in Houston, Texas. Working with NASA and the US Department of Agriculture the campaign team intend to calibrate meteorological satellites and add to the data supporting computer climate models for the region.
Satellite Calibration
The campaign aims to calibrate the data received from meteorological satellites by shadowing their tracks and comparing the data received. Operating at 32,000 feet the ARA will be overflown by NASA’s ER-2 high altitude airborne science aircraft at 60,000 feet, with the satellites collecting data immediately above in a near earth orbit.
The NASA ER-2 High Altitude Airborne Science Aircraft, a science platform capable of reaching altitues in excess of 68,000 feet.
Directflight are delighted to announce that they have been successful in securing the Shetland Island Council PSO contract for a further three years. Directflight would like to thank the Council and resident Island communities for their continued support.
On Monday 24th September Directflight flew out a group of ornithologists to Fair Isle to allow them to photograph a rare visitor to UK shores. The Magnolia Warbler, a native of North America, has only been sighted in the UK once before, on the Scillies in 1981. These photographs were taken by Steve Arlow on the 23rd September.
South AMerican Biomass Burning Analysis – SAMBBA
Directflight has just completed the first of 2 Marine Scotland (MS) maritime patrol aircraft mission equipment and cockpit upgrades.
The enhancements to the aircraft include replacing and relocating the existing Communications and Navigation suites with Garmin GTN 750 and 650 systems and upgrading the satellite communications. The primary surveillance aircraft has been fitted with a state of the art FLIR Star Safire III multi sensor optical and thermal imager. This greatly improves the aircraft’s mission capability at night and in poor visibility, providing a key enforcement tool and presenting an enormous deterrent value to potential offenders.
Kiruna is a center for various cold weather operations such as Science campaigns, cold weather testing of new aircraft by Boeing and Airbus and Space exploration testing by the Virgin Galactic team. Our stay coincided with the combined winter exercises of the Swedish/Norwegian/Finnish armed forces. Our home was in the specially built and dedicated Arena Arctica hangar 
