Pre-Mission Lectures

Whew, I'm exhausted! These last three days have been a whirlwind of new information, all flying at us (no pun intended) at full force. We learned about earth-observing satellites from NASA scientists and engineers, as well as the earth, atmospheric and oceanic parameters they measure. (All those lectures can be found here.)

Professor Don Blake, standing in front of Dr. Sherwood Rowland's first notes considering the impact of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in the atmosphere, demonstrating the mechanics of CFCs in an aerosol can using liquid nitrogen (courtesy of NSERC: http://www.nserc.und.edu/learning/SARPmm.html?2011)

We also received a tutorial on ENVI, a remote sensing imagery analysis software that we'll be using with the MASTER data we'll be collecting. Playing with high-resolution satellite images, we practiced techniques for classification, evaluation and interpretation of remote sensing data.

Tomorrow we head to Palmdale to tour the NASA Dryden Airborne Operations Facility. We'll be checking out the planes and learning about mission flight planning.