image: The first of two NASA Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles supporting the Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) mission landed at 7:39 a.m. EDT, Aug. 14, 2013, at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, Wallops Island, Va. In this photo, the Global Hawk is being housed in a hangar. The Global Hawk aircraft measures 44 feet in length, with a wingspan of 116 feet.
The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) is a five-year mission specifically targeted to investigate the processes that underlie hurricane formation and intensity change in the Atlantic Ocean basin. HS3 is motivated by hypotheses related to the relative roles of the large-scale environment and storm-scale internal processes.
The NASA Global Hawk aircraft are ideal platforms for investigations of hurricanes, capable of flight altitudes greater than 55,000 ft and flight durations of up to 30 hours. HS3 will use two Global Hawks, one with an instrument suite geared toward measurement of the environment and the other with instruments suited to inner-core structure and processes. The environmental payload includes the scanning High-resolution Interferometer Sounder, dropsondes, theTWiLiTE Doppler wind lidar, and the Cloud Physics Lidar, while the over-storm payload includes the HIWRAP conically scanning Doppler radar, the HIRAD multi-frequency interferometric radiometer, and the HAMSR microwave sounder. Field measurements will take place for one month each during the hurricane seasons of 2012 through 2014.
For more information, visit the NASA HS3 Webpage at: www.nasa.gov/HS3
Credit: NASA Wallops Flight Facility