Day 5 - 11 October 2020

The first half of the week was dedicated to define the contents of the Test flight in order to validate functional tests of both NanoCarb and SPEXairborne instruments in real flight conditions. After being delayed by a faulty battery element on-board the test aircraft, we are finally able to start our flight test campaign on Friday 9th of October.

The Falcon 20 successfully performs its EMI test flight in the morning to verify the absence of electromagnetic interference that would affect measurements.

The first science test flight takes off in the afternoon at 2:15 pm for a duration of 3.5 hours. We head towards South of Spain where we can find clear sky conditions and start collecting data over land and sea providing interesting topography variations for NanoCarb, and over Aeronet stations (Granada, Tabernas, etc.) for SPEXairborne.

 Just after the flight completion the Falcon 20 test aircraft is unfortunately grounded due to an issue with the hatch motor. We are waiting for a spare part to be delivered and eager to resume our flight campaign.

In the meantime, the science team is actively exploiting the science data retrieved during the flight over Spain.