A pilotless NASA aircraft was set to fly over Hurricane Earl yesterday, in a scientific first to gather data about the potentially deadly storm front bearing down on the US east coast.
After taking off from Edwards Air Force base in California, the converted Global Hawk drone will use a battery of instruments to study how hurricanes develop into awesome forces of nature.
“This is a real adventure for this airplane,” said Commander Phil Hall, who will control the plane.
PHOTO: EPA/NASA HANDOUT
“Going over a hurricane, for any airplane, is a bit risky, and we are kind of breaking a new frontier with this flight,” he said.
The Global Hawk proved its mettle last week when it overflew Tropical Storm Frank off the coast of Mexico — but with speeds of up to 230kph, Earl is in a different league.
Originally built to take photos for military reconnaissance missions, the aircraft “is not designed for turbulence or for bad weather,” Hall said.
The plane may be fragile, but NASA is expecting a lot from it. The space agency’s three aircraft are part of its Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) hurricane research mission.
The NASA mission aims to learn more about why and how storms gain or lose power, grow into hurricanes or fizzle out to become strong winds, over the course of sometimes only a few hours.
“Certainly there are many good tools already on other airplanes but this one allows us to develop satellite-like instruments,” said Gerry Heymsfield, a NASA research meteorologist.
“We are trying to understand what does lead to the intensification of the storms, because if we can understand some of these processes, we will be allowed to forecast better,” he said.
One key asset of the Global Hawk is that it can stay continuously aloft for 30 hours.
“We can take this airplane from here, in California, to the North Pole, and about 10 hours after, come back here in one flight,” Hall said. “That’s why this aircraft has capabilities that are so interesting to scientists.”
NASA hopes to move the planes’ base soon to the East Coast — closer to where many storms develop over the Atlantic — to make even better use of its long flight time.
The GRIP program will give NASA a better understanding of how sand and dust from Africa’s Sahara desert feed into storms.
“The general theory is that Saharan dust inhibits the formation of storms, but it’s not always the case,” Heymsfield said.
“The big picture is to help improve the forecast. So for the public, it allows us to increase safety and warnings,” Hall said.
Meanwhile, Earl gained more punch yesterday as it churned up the Atlantic, threatening the US East Coast with dangerous winds and large swells and forcing evacuations in North Carolina.
The National Hurricane Center said Earl, a Category 4 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale of intensity, had strengthened with its top sustained winds of 230kph.
The winds are expected to reach the North Carolina barrier islands yesterday afternoon and gain force during the night, before the storm begins to weakening, the center said.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS