Spotlight - NASA air quality study 2013

NASA is in town

Porterville,CA; site of NASA air quality study, January 18, 2013

A picture of the moment a stratospheric balloon bursts

 The moment of balloon explosion

     Members of the "Gator Team" [Dr.Anne Thompson's, research team, Dr. Doug Martins and graduate students Hannah Halliday, Ryan Stauffer and David Doughty] are currently deployed with NATIVE in the Central Valley of California.
      In case it’s gone unnoticed, the plane that has been flying at an unusually low altitude over Porterville is part of a $30 million NASA study aimed at helping scientists to get a better handle on how to measure and forecast air quality from space.
     The five-year airborne mission, called DISCOVER-AQ — Deriving Information on Surface conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality — is aimed at improving the ability of satellites to consistently observe air quality in the lowest part of the atmosphere.

 Read the full article here:  recorderonline.com