Hey all,
First of all, we would just like to thank Scott and Oscar for the great dedicatory post from yesterday. Second, this morning we received the email from our friends up in Iceland telling us the glider is now in the water. At 1pm (9am in NJ), Ben Allsup of Teledyne sent us the email “The Bear is About” indicating the glider has entered the water. The deployment crew consisted of Chris DeCollibus from Teledyne Webb Research, Alvaro Lorenzo from PLOCAN, and Arnar Steingrimsson of Teledyne Gavia. They left from Grindavik, Iceland this morning and went about 10km south in the ship Oddur V Gislason.
After reaching an area where the depths came to about 130 meters, Challenger 1 was deployed and began running its test missions. The first of which was a single dive to 100 meters and the second being a 4 dive mission expecting to take close to 4 hrs. If these tests go well, the glider will be left in the water and will begin its journey south to the Canaries. Our friends at Teledyne will be maintaining control of the glider through the weekend to make sure everything is in order, but next week they will be handed over to our team here at Rutgers.
Nilsen