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GRIP Global Hawk Navigation and Housekeeping Data Table of Contents
The Global Hawk is a robotic airplane that can fly autonomously to altitudes up to 65,000 feet, or roughly twice as high as a commercial airliner can fly. It can cruise as far as 11,000 nautical miles, which is half the circumference of Earth, and has the capability to take more than 1500 lb (680 kg) of payload while cruising at 350 knots. The Global Hawk operators pre-program a flight path, then the plane flies itself for as long as 31 hours, staying in contact through satellite and line-of-site communications links to a ground control station at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base (EAFB) in California's Mojave Desert. Although the plane is designed to fly on its own, pilots can change its course or altitude based on interesting atmospheric phenomena ahead. No other science platform provides the range and time to sample rapidly evolving atmospheric phenomena as the Global Hawk does. This allows scientific research in regions that could not be reached, and for extended periods of time that are impossible with conventional aircraft. Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, Rancho Bernardo, California, and NASA Dryden created a partnership to operate Global Hawk missions from Dryden Flight Research Center. NASA and Northrop Grumman share use of the ground control station, maintenance facilities, and the NASA Global Hawk aircraft. The Global Hawk has a wingspan of more than 116 feet, a height of 15 feet, and is 44 feet long. The gross takeoff weight is around 25,600 pounds. A single Rolls-Royce AE3007H turbofan engine powers the aircraft. The distinctive V-tail, engine cover, aft fuselage and wing are constructed of graphite composite materials. The center fuselage is constructed of conventional aluminum, while various fairings and radomes feature fiberglass composite construction. This dataset consists of the real-time housekeeping data. It is broadcast on the aircraft network by the NASDAT (NASA Airborne Science Data Acquisition and Transmission unit), as 1 Hz Universal Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets. The packet format is a simple ASCII CSV format named IWG1. This format is supported on all the NASA and NCAR aircraft and replaces the legacy aircraft-dependent data formats which were generally available via a serial bus. Housekeeping data is acquired from various sources, including the aircraft’s LN-100G IMU and the GH flight computer. The Genesis and Rapid Intensification Processes (GRIP) experiment was a NASA Earth science field experiment conducted August 5 to September 30, 2010. The major goal was to better understand how tropical storms form and develop into major hurricanes. NASA used the DC-8 aircraft, the WB-57 aircraft and the Global Hawk Unmanned Airborne System (UAS), configured with a suite of in situ and remote sensing instruments that were used to observe and characterize the lifecycle of hurricanes. This campaign also capitalized on a number of ground networks and space-based assets, in addition to the instruments deployed on aircraft from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida ( DC-8), Houston, Texas (WB-57), and NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, California (Global Hawk). More information about this Campaign can be found on the GRIP web site: http://grip.nsstc.nasa.gov/ The data files are in IWGADTS (The Interagency Working Group for Airborne Data and Telecommunications Systems Note: Documentation for custom parameters was not provided. The *.xml files describe the data format but are mostly meant to enable future programs to automatically parse and ingest this and similar data streams, such as point-and-click display interfaces (this XML is automatically generated by the NASA Airborne Science Data Acquisition and Transmission unit (NASDAT). The navigational and housekeeping files are named following the examples below:
where:
The data producer is:
To order these data or for further information, please contact:
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