NASA is redoubling work on its research mission during this year's Atlantic hurricane season.
Two unmanned Global Hawk aircraft will be used to probe the inside of hurricanes and tropical storms, according to Jet Propulsion Observatory.
This year will be the third in a row that the space agency's Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, mission will visit the Atlantic Ocean. The mission aims at investigating the processes that cause the formation of hurricanes and their changes in intensity in the Atlantic Ocean basin.
HS3 will fly from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on Aug. 26 and Sept. 29, Phys.org reported. These dates are at the peak of the Atlantic Hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to Nov. 30.
"This year we're going full-force into tropical cyclone research," said Scott Braun, principal investigator for HS3 and research meteorologist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "We'll have two Global Hawks equipped with six instruments. The new NASA-JAXA Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory will be providing much higher quality data than previously available on rain structure in tropical cyclones in all ocean basins. The surface-wind monitoring ISS-RapidScat instrument to be launched to the International Space Station this season will provide valuable information on surface winds in storms."
The Global Hawk aircraft can fly for as long as 26 hours, Jet Propulsion Observatory reported. They can also fly above hurricanes at altitudes higher than 55,000 feet.
One of the aircraft will analyze the inner region of the storms and measure wind, temperature, precipitation and humidity. Three instruments will be carried by the aircraft, which include the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Integrated Circuit Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR) microwave sounder. The technology was developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Observatory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The other aircraft will carry three other instruments, and is tasked with studying the environment around the storms.
The GPM mission, set to launch on Feb. 27, will measure rainfall every three hours around the world. The RapidScat mission, set to launch in August, will measure ocean surface winds in Earth's tropics and mid-altitudes. It will also obtain data to be used to forecast marine storms, Phys.org reported.
Other NASA centers that will participate in HS3 include Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., and the Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif.
