Some pictures from the AASE mission

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This is a group photo of the AASE participants gathered around the NASA DC-8 on the tarmac in Stavanger, Norway, in January 1989. With every Principal Investigator come a number of associates (co-investigators, postdocs, and graduate students) who do a large part of the day-to-day "grunt work".

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The civilian airport in Stavanger (nearby Sola, actually) is across the runway from a small Norwegian Air Force base. The base played host to the AASE mission. This is the squadron hut which served as our offices. The Code 916 Goddard group's office is the first window to the right of the front door. The ER-2 hangar was next door.

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Many of the experiments on the NASA DC-8 flying laboratory have probes sticking through the windows of the plane to take in air for analysis. Others do remote sensing by analyzing light that has had certain frequencies absorbed or scattered by the gasses in the atmosphere through which it has passed; these must look through special replacement windows which do not filter out the frequencies of light they are looking at. Here are some DC-8 experimenters checking their window on the DC-8.

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There were two lidar instruments on board the DC-8. These rapidly pulse powerful laser beams into the atmosphere above the aircraft. This light is scattered back by ozone molecules and aerosol particles; instrumentation on the DC-8 measures this scattered light and can use it to deduce how much ozone there is, as well as the density and polarization properties of the aerosols. In this photo of the DC-8 on the ground in early morning, you can faintly see the two beams from the two lidars extending up from the roof of the plane.

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This is a picture of the output from Dr. Ed Browell's DIAL lidar experiment. The analysis of the data is done in real time on the aircraft, and the ozone and aerosol profiles are printed out as color images as the measurements are being made.

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The nose of the NASA ER-2 contained the Meteorological Measurement System (to produce highly accurate measurements of wind and temperature) and a set of Whole Air Sampler cans (which are used to take samples of the air for later analysis with a mass spectrometer). This photo shows one of the whole air sampler investigators preparing the instrument prior to takeoff.

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The ER-2 also has instruments in the Q-bay under its belly and in pods on each wing. Here you see investigators making final preparations on the starboard wing pod, which contains instruments to measure N2O and aerosols. You can see the intake probes for the instruments sticking out the front of the pod.

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Here is the ER-2 pilot going over his checklist before a flight. Because the aircraft flies at over 65,000 feet, the pilot must wear a full pressure suit in case the seals fail in the pressurized cockpit (it has happened). The flights for these missions usually last about 8 hours, and during that entire period the pilot is strapped into position in the tiny single-seat cockpit. If he should drop his food tube, there is not enough room to bend down and pick it up, and he has to do without (this, too, has happened).

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Here is the ER-2 on the taxiway at the Stavanger airport. A canopy covers the ER-2 cockpit to protect it from the elements. You can see the civilian airport in the distance, across the runway.

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This is a photo, taken through a window on the DC-8, of Polar Stratospheric Clouds (PSCs). PSCs come in two types: Type I is made of crystals of nitric acid and water (called "Nitric Acid Trihydrate," or "NAT"); these can be seen here as faint orange/pink layers. Type II is frozen water--the white streaks higher up. Reactions taking place on the surface of PSC particles release chlorine from its reservoir species to destroy ozone. They also remove reactive nitrogen compounds (which would otherwise react with the chlorine, preventing ozone depletion). These are the particles that the aerosol-measuring instruments mentioned above are looking for.

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Photos courtesy of NASA public affairs office.