Hey All!
So Challenger 1 has made considerable progress within the past few days. Since Friday, Challenger 1 has flown roughly 122km/75 miles, breaking our speed record yet again hitting 0.63 m/s!!
We harnessed the power of the clockwise flow of the Eastern-side of the eddys and are cruising. For the next few days the currents seem favorable, quickly heading in the East – Southeast direction, ever closer to our waypoint.
Today, Antonio have us a few new products that will likely help us even more on our travels.
First he gave us a new Sea Surface Height map takes the european geoid (mean surface height), and calculates the isopotential surface position and from there highlights and predicts surface anomalies.
This will give us another perspective on where the warm and cold eddies are and predicted to go to better our forecast and piloting judgements.
Next we have a new current map that shows the intensity of the vertical attribute of the currents. So on the map below, the darker red the area, the stronger the currents are moving north, while darker blue means a southerly movement.
As the maps above show, we are still in the reaches of the strong warm eddy we had first encountered late last week that threatened to pull us back out west, but we should officially be out of its reach over the next day or so and continue on our way south.
Also with how well these warm eddies are lined up, we hope to not have to change the way point for a while as we plan to just surf the currents from the east side of one warm eddy to the next until we are out of this solar system.
We will keep everyone updated!
Nilsen , Antonio, and Oliver