To facilitate that choice, emission predictions have been made by Joe Olejniczak, Mike Wright, and George Raiche of NASA Ames Research Center. Joe Olejniczak, George Raiche, and Dean Kontinos (from left to right) welcome the DC-8 aircraft at Ames. 2006 Jan 04 – The DC-8 Airborne Laboratory has arrived at NASA Ames Research Center. 2006 Jan 03 – Observers gathered in California to observe the Quadrantid shower as a test of instruments and to prepare for a future Quadrantid campaign. Unfortunately, this very narrow shower will peak over Europe this year, and night time rates in California will not be very high. California time, the ground crew led by Ron Dantowitz departed for Nevada from the SETI Institute. Crew Dragon’s hatch has been closed again and the cabin leak checks will resume. We already had planned to use the meteors as test objects for instrument checks and callibrations in a local flight from Ames. 2005 Nov 23 – Each instrument to be deployed has a range of possible exposure times, fields of view, optics, filters, etc., that can be chosen to optimize the detection. By choosing a leather business bag made from materials sourced from environmentally sustainable manufacturing, we can make an environmentally responsible choice.

We measured light identified as to come from the hot surface, air plasma emissions from the shock, and emissions from materials ablated from the heat shield. The software then connects with the plane’s other avionics and scans the broadcast signals of nearby air traffic to make sure there are no potential conflicts. The satellite can then send them back down to different spots on Earth. We are on two NASA satellite mission science teams, because our simulations are used to predict the measurements of satellites used to monitor the ocean. Approval is needed for UND to operate the DC-8 aircraft for our mission. Photo: Peter Jenniskens. DC-8 has arrived at Ames! Photo: Bryan Murahashi Early this afternoon, at around 2 p.m. Minor problems concerned frosting on the windows due to high humidity in the cabin and interference in video cables. During the second test flight on Thursday night, there were no window frosting problems any more, but we have to see how the higher humidity affects this on tonights flight.

Ron Dantowitz of Clay Center Observatory, lead of our ground team, reports from Tonapah, Nevada: “We had snow the day before and we had snow shortly after, but right at the time of the reentry there was a clearing in the cloud deck. The object was surprisingly bright at our location, about magnitude -2. We tracked on the object as soon as it emerged in a gap between the clouds, but lost it shortly after. We obtained near-IR and visible spectra.” More first reactions. The highlight of the night was a bright yellow -5 magnitude Quadrantid with a train of 20 seconds. We observed the reflected sunlight off an Iridium satellite, producing a bright -7 magnitude flare visible for several seconds. The aircraft was positioned correctly and the flare was observed as predicted. 2005 Nov 04 – Delay of Inter-center Aircraft Operations Panel Review until early December: this is a critical review that establishes the transfer of the DC-8 aircraft operations from NASA Dryden to UND. Freshly painted with the University of North Dakota banner, the DC-8 performed pilot test flights this afternoon. Tonight’s test flight will reveal if those issues have been solved adequately.

The workshop on reentry emission signatures will go foreward as planned, with delivery of instruments at Ames (time line). The Stardust SRC entry observing campaign upload at Ames is now scheduled for early January. 2005 Dec 29 – In support of the airborne observations, Ron Dantowitz and Marek Kozubal of Clay Center Observatory at Dexter and Southfield Schools will deploy this automatically tracking telescope to observe the Stardust Sample Return Campsule entry from the ground. 2005 Nov 08 – The new Stardust SRC entry observing campaign’s mission patch design shows the Sample Return Capsule entering Earth’s atmosphere, with the orange airglow layer marking the boundary with the realm of space. Weather permitting, this experiment will focus on spatially resolving features in the wake of the SRC and provide a side view of the capsule at the time of peak heating. Click on the map for an expanded view. Quadrantid shower instrument-test flight path (click on image for larger version). The weather looked abismal, but observers caught a break when the sky cleared between two rain storms for a short period of time in the early morning of January 03. The shower performed as expected. 2005 Oct 23 – NASA’s Planetary Astronomy program has allocated funding for an extended test flight during the January 03, 2006, Quadrantid meteor shower.