After months of sitting in pieces being worked on in labs ranging from the University of Sao Paulo to Teledyne Webb Research and Rutgers University, RU29 is back in the game. David Aragon and Chip Haldeman spent roughly a week down in the USP facilities after gathering up all of her parts, where they then assembled Challenger and prepared her for her next mission- a feat that wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our friends at both the university in Brazil and at TWR.
Early Monday morning (Nov 17, 2014), the boat departed Ubatuba around 5:30am (2:30am EST) and within a few hours the glider was deployed amongst the rolling swell of the sea, off of the Southern Brazil Bight.
Now following the line dubbed the Ilhabela Line (Native for Beautiful Island after the island near to the deployment team’s departure point), Challenger will fly across the shelf before we eventually hit deep water and aim our sights on Cape Town.
For video of the deployment and initial test, click here
There is also some great news from our friends at Teledyne Webb Research on the other Challenger Mission Glider, Silbo. After drifting at the surface for roughly 72 days and being rescued by fisherman off the coast of Barbados in August of 2013, Silbo has undergone a lengthy refurbishment process during which amongst a number of other upgrades, he has received a new pump and thruster system. Soon he will be deployed for an off shelf test out of Woods Hole, Massachusetts where the new rig will be tested thoroughly before we set forth on the next North Atlantic Mission: spanning from North America across the northern region of the ocean basin towards our partners in Ireland and the United Kingdom and eventually Svalbard, Norway.
Force Wind Sea & Honor