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In order to put a snow satellite into space,

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you need to test the instruments from a plane first.

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SnowEx is a five-year NASA airborne campaign to

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work towards a future snow satellite mission

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and we need to find out what sorts of remote-sensing techniques 

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will work best for different kinds of snow.

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The only way to find that out is to actually take a bunch of different types of sensors,

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put them on an airplane,

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fly them out in the field under real snow conditions,

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and that's exactly what we're doing.

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What plane is being used?

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The P-3. It's an old military plane.

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The military planes are loud, and vibrate, and they're cold. 

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Think of a commercial airplane. Take all the insides out. 

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What you have there, what every plane will have,

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it’s what’s called seat rails. We use these.

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We build our instruments in, what we call, data racks.

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That's how we control the instrument. 

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We will build our racks in such a way that they also attach on to these seat rails.

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How else is the plane different?

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So the walls of this aircraft, I find pretty interesting.

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They’re not solid like on your commercial.

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It’s like a piece of cloth you can actually remove and run wires,

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and run different instrument things and make it a lot easier to

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modify where your things are on the aircraft. 

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How do you check that the instruments are measuring snow accurately? 

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We have a lot of people on the ground collecting science data

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and they’re doing that to compare what we’re seeing with our instruments. 

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It's a data comparison type deal.

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These flight lines are planned so that we specifically fly over 

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wherever the ground truth people are with their instruments

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and taking their experiments. 

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What is the flight like?

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So flying on the P-3 is really bumpy.

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We do a lot of maneuvers that you would never do on a commercial jet.

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High bank angles, sharp turns, really low flying.

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The lower you are, the more turbulent it is.

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What are you doing on the flight?

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So when I’m on a science flight,

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I’m checking to make sure the instrument's still running

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and taking data the way I want it to.

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Everyone's very focused on their instrument.

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You're constantly checking to make sure that the data's coming in.

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My job is to make sure all the instrument operators are looking at their instruments

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and that they’re collecting all the adequate data they need. 

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What is the goal for the first year?

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The best thing that we can get out of SnowEx this year one

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is really to collect a multi-sensor data set over a wide range of conditions.

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These SnowEx science flights are the combinations of two plus years of work. 

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It’s really exciting to be a part of something so big.

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