Flying robots take to the skies

by Tamsin Gray     Department: Earth

One of the great things about science is that it can sometimes involve a lot of playing with fancy new toys.  A new toy appeared in Antarctica this year: a hi-tech remote control aeroplane! We're all quite excited as these are the first Antarctic flights of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) equipped with meteorological sensors. Flying can be great fun but it's also nerve wracking, as Alex, my colleague and a key member of the flight team, explains...

"Halley's a great place if you like snow and ice, that's pretty much all we have here.  I live on a two hundred meter thick bit of floating ice and snow, an ice shelf, stretching flat in every direction.  10 miles away it stops in shear cliffs, dropping 30 meters to meet huge plates of ice that cover the sea for as far as the eye can see.  Between the ice and the sky there's us and some air, and a lot of what we do at Halley investigates how the different sorts of ice and snow affect the lowest levels of the air.  We've done this for years with balloons and mast mounted instruments but for the first time this year we're extending the reach of our measurements by flying a tiny plane over the snow and the ice to see what happens.


Flying a mission is always a little scary, we launch the plane using an elastic bungee to make a long catapult.  Holding it against the pull of the elastic can take a lot of strength but it's always a relief to let go and watch the plane lift and gain height.  Tom, the project engineer and pilot, stands by with his remote control and flies it a little until a stable flight is acheived, then we engage the autopilot. The plane then turns and heads off into the distance, disappearing from view after about half a mile, and dropping out of radio contact with its computer base station after four miles or so.  That part of the mission is the most scary, as we've nothing to do  but wait for fifteen minutes biting our nails as the plane follows its plan.  We breath a sigh of relief when we regain the signal and see some coordinates on the screen, but only declare success once we've seen the machine, taken it smoothly back down to the snow, and downloaded the data its recorded.





We don't know yet exactly what fascinating secrets the data might reveal, as this is the first time anything like this has even been attempted here. Hopefully, the tracks taken over shelf and sea ice should help us better understand how heat transfers from the oceans underneath the ice into the air above.  This will feed into weather forecast and climate models, ultimately helping us get a better idea of how global warming might affect the Arctic and Antarctic sea ice.  For the time being, though, I'm enjoying playing with the plane..."

Tags: Antarctica, ice, meteorology, sea ice, UAV

TrackBack URL for this entry: http://www.pbs.org/mt4/mt-tb.cgi/147

+ Add Comment

Post your comment

Name
Email Address
URL

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.