ALOFT - Airborne Lightning Observatory for FEGS and TGFs
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.
About the research project
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.
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.
* FEGs = Fly´s Eye GLM Simulator
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Project manager
Nikolai Østgaard Principal Investigator, University of Bergen
Martino Marisaldi Deputy Principal Investigator, University of Bergen
Project members
Timothy Lang Project Scientist, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, USA
Mason Quick Deputy Project Scientist, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, USA