Collaboration between NASA and University of Bergen
The ALOFT campaign is a unique suborbital campaign to advance the science of high-energy radiation emissions from thunderstorms, validate existing spaceborne lightning mappers and evaluate design concepts for next-generation mappers, and study convection from a suborbital platform.
High-energy radiation from thunderstorms are:
Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes (TGFs), which are short lived (few tens to hundreds of microsecond) gamma-ray flashes associated with lightning strokes
Gamma-ray glows, which are long-lasting (minutes to hours) from the entire cloud.
ALOFT is a collaboration between NASA and the University of Bergen that will fly the ER-2 aircraft over tropical thunderstorms around the Gulf of Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The payload will consist of lightning detectors, gamma-ray scintillators, and a mixture of passive and/or active microwave sensors. Supporting the flights will be a diverse ground-based network of lightning instruments spread across the region of interest. A total of 60 scientific flight hours is planned.
Principal Investigator: Nikolai Østgaard, University of Bergen, Norway
Deputy Principal Investigator: Martino Marisaldi, University of Bergen, Norway
Project Scientist: Timothy Lang, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama
Deputy Project Scientist: Mason Quick, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Aløabama
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)
Birkeland Centre for Space Science (BCSS)
Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)
* FEGs = Fly´s Eye GLM Simulator