A souped up version of the Global Hawk will make the ATTREX
flights starting in January. NASA is just days away from
launching a new aircraft 65,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean to
investigate how a warming climate is impacting Earth's upper
atmosphere. The first flights of the Airborne Tropical
Tropopause Experiment (ATTREX), a multi-year airborne science
campaign with a heavily instrumented Global Hawk aircraft, will
take off from and be operated by NASA's Dryden Flight Research
Center at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The Global Hawk
is able to make 30-hour flights. - Solar Eruption: Size of 20
Earths - Martian Meteorite Has Secrets Water vapor and ozone in
the stratosphere can have a large impact on Earth's climate. The
processes that drive the rise and fall of these compounds,
especially water vapor, are not well understood. This limits
scientists' ability to predict how these changes will influence
global climate in the future. ATTREX will study moisture and
chemical composition in the upper regio