Challenger Track
The Challenger Mission (1872-1876) truly laid the foundation for the study of Oceanography. The HMS Challenger was the first scientific vessel to circumnavigate the globe; traveling over 130,000 km, taking 263 temperature samples, and discovering nearly 4,700 new species. Since then there have been numerous advances and countless expeditions to learn as much as we can of the world’s ocean.
We need now more than ever to understand our oceans the best we can, as they are a huge contributing factor that dictates the global climate. What we are setting out to do, is recreate the Challenger mission by coordinating a fleet of Slocum Gliders to sail along its path, taking continuous profiles that we can then use not only to better understand what the ocean is doing now, but to fine tune our models and be able to make more accurate predictions for the future.
The final and most important part of this mission is to inspire a global network of students throughout the course of this expedition. As the global climate changes and other problems ensue, the weight of the world’s problems will fall to the current students as they replace their professors in their fields. Our goal for this summer is to fly the first leg of the Challenger Mission from Reykjavic, Iceland to Las Palmas in the Canary Islands using the Slocum Glider Challenger 1, to be piloted solely by students working from Rutgers, PLOCAN (Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands) and The University of Western Australia.
Phase ONE
After the success of RU 27 in 2009, which gave us concrete proof we can run extreme long distance missions using the Slocum Gliders, we now move to our next challenge of taking gliders around the world through the challenger mission. Now starting in 2011, we run the first leg of the mission (shown here in green) going from Iceland to the Canaries. The planning for the next two missions of crossing the Atlantic through the tropics are also in the works for the next couple years (shown in red and orange)
Students involvement
The group of students working from Rutgers consists of Nilsen Strandskov, Oliver Ho, Lindsay Roupe, Ruben Marrero Gomez & Juan Alberto Gonzalez Santana. Nilsen and Oliver are majoring in Marine Science at Rutgers. Lindsay is an intern from North Carolina State University, also studying Marine Science. Ruben and Juan will be joining us from the Canaries and helping us on the mission through September. We will be in charge of every aspect of this mission from path planning to public out reach and writing the blogs.