Tag: Nilsen Strandskov (Page 6 of 11)

Hey All,

So it appears we may have jumped the gun a little on the redeployment of Challenger.  After we put him back in the water and left the site, he began flying peculiarly.  After running some diagnostics, it was determined that the pitch battery, which can be manipulated to change the angle the glider dives and climbs, had come loose and was causing the strange flight pattern.   Weather permitting we will be recovering as soon as we can so we can fix the problem and get Challenger back on his way.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey all!

After just about a day of being out of the water, Challenger was so eager to get back on his way that he is back on a boat RIGHT NOW for redeployment!  Yesterday, Chris DeCollibus (TWR) and Rayco Moran (PLOCAN) recovered Challenger off of Sao Miguel to diagnose a reoccurring leak in the aft compartment.  After getting back to port and with the support of our friends up at Teledyne Webb working round the clock, they got the glider  checked out and found the problem to be a faulty o-ring on the pressure transducer.  After this relatively simple fix, Chris and Rayco hopped back on the boat and are now out on their way to deploy Challenger and send him on his way to complete this epic journey!

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All!

Just a short while ago Challenger was successfully recovered off the Northern shore of Sao Miguel!  This brave little robot flew an astonishing 3,412 km in just 143 days.  Not only is the distance covered an amazing feet, but Challenger was the first glider to fly from Arctic waters up by Iceland to the warmer waters down in the Azores.

Soon the team will arrive back on shore where they will run a number of diagnostic tests to try and find out what has been causing the leak.  Finally, weather and test permitting, we hope to get the glider back in the water this weekend.  Check back soon for more information and possibly some pictures from the recovery!

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

In just a few hours our crew is setting sail for Challenger’s recovery.  The last of our team will be touching down on the island shortly where they will then board the vessel and sail out to the glider.  Since we last updated, we have moved the waypoint to the south towards our rendezvous point.

There is a prime window tomorrow that we are aiming to run our operation.  It is projected to be benevolent conditions for recovery with the waves are around 1-2m, calm winds, and minimal shipping traffic. Looking at the image below provided by Antonio, there is actually a band of calm conditions that runs straight through the Azores providing us with near perfect conditions for our operation.

The waves also seem to follow a similar pattern to the wind as we find ourselves in a corridor with less favorable conditions to both the north and south yet smooth sailing in the vicinity of the Azores.

After departing early tomorrow morning from the port of Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel, they will head around the east of the island to rendezvous with Challenger just to the North.  As of this evening, Challenger is about 66km from port (~3 hr boat trip).  Once Challenger is brought on board the ship, he will return to the facilities back in Ponta Delgada where we hope the problem causing the leak detect to be triggered will be easily diagnosed and be an easy fix.  If this is the case, we hope to redeploy Challenger friday and send him on his way towards the Canaries and La Gomera.  If this is not the case, parts will be shipped over and Challenger will be put on hiatus until we are confident he is ready to continue his journey.

We wish our team the best of luck tomorrow and Force Wind Sea & Honor to all!

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos, Oliver Ho & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

So Challenger has been closing in on Sao Miguel over the past couple of days as we get ready to recover..

As of this afternoon Challenger is about 80 km from port, or about a 4 hr boat ride (granted the ship is going 10 nautical mph).  However the closer we get, the risk of having an unfriendly encounter with boat traffic increases.  Because of this, we have moved the way point due west of Challenger’s location and added a way point back to the east that way Challenger will spend some time going between the way points to buy our scientists some time.

We hope that by Wednesday, Challenger will be on his way back towards the way point to the east so that the boat and take a short trip around the western side of Sao Miguel and pick the glider up and back back to shore as soon as we can.  Weather wise it still looks as if Wednesday will be prime recovery window to be followed up by a further inspection of the glider and hopefully a redeployment on Friday with our next window of opportunity.  But for now we wait as the team makes their final preparations to get out to the island and put this rescue mission into action.

Force Wind Sea & Honor

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

As we arrange for Challenger’s recovery on shore, our little glider continues progress towards Sao Miguel.  However, the elements are proving to be relentless and refuse to let up.

Figure 1: Storm as of 11/11/11

Challenger is in the midst of yet another storm that has stirred up the seas causing an inertial oscillation near the surface that has been pushing him around.  Because we are now diving to 300m to avoid the intense pressures at depth that have caused our previous two leaks, we are now more likely to be effected by the storm as we are spending more time in waters towards the surface.

Figure 2: Challenger 1 making good progress despite a storm

To help combat any inertial oscillations and to get us back towards shore as fast as possible, we have been flying with full buoyancy.  Flying at the higher intensity, although keeping us flying relatively straight, is very inefficient energy wise and so we have turned it off as of this afternoon.  Because of this we will most likely see more of a drift to the north as we get pushed by the currents.

Figure 3: Challenger 1: just over 100km from the Port of Ponta Delgada

Below we have a dissection of the water column provided by Antonio and ULPGC, showing the currents (Figure 4) and the North-South components (Figure 5) at the surface, 100m, 200m and 300m depths.  Below that in Figure 6 we see a nice association between the movement on the surface waters and the sea surface height (and continuing correlation at depth).

Figure 4: Currents around The Azores at the Surface, 100m, 200m and 300m depths

Figure 5: N-S flow at the Surface, 100m, 200m and 300m depths

Figure 6: Sea Surface Height with the Surface Currents overlayed

Another fascinating point is that beginning a few days back, Challenger discovered a patch of very salty water at depth, depicted by the orange blob in the bottom right corner of Figure 7.  This is the outflow of water from the Mediterranean.  Water in the Mediterranean has a much higher level of salinity due to higher levels of evaporation than fresh water inputs.  This water then can be traced as it flows into the North Atlantic for thousands of kilometers.  In Figure 8 and 9, we have Sea Salinity at the Surface, 200m, 500m, 800m, 900m, 1000, and 1200m courtesy of Antonio and ULPGC.

Figure 7: Salinity Data Collected by Silbo. Beginning with early November there is a strong anamoly at depth

Figure 8: Salinity at Surface, 200m, 500m, and 800m

Figure 9: Salinity at 900m, 1000m, 1200m and Time Series from Challenger's Journey

Finally, I would just like to mention what our current plan is for recovery of our brave little droid.  As we are in the North Atlantic in the middle of storm season, there are windows that are ideal and ones that are not.  We had an original window we were looking at of Saturday the 12th (tomorrow) where the forecast called for clear skies and relatively calm seas.  However, finding a boat, facilities and plane tickets out to the Azores can be difficult (especially on such short notice), and so the next reasonable meteorological window that allowed us to get access to all of the resources needed  lands us on Wednesday Nov. 16th.  The recovery team will be leaving the Port of Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel where the 32 ft fishing boat, Alabote (seen in Figure 10) is available to us.  Time of departure will be decided when we get closer to the mission, but when the team returns to land, Challenger will get checked out and hopefully be able to be put back in the water as soon as possible.

Figure 10: Alabote Fishing Boat

The recovery will hopefully not take too long to sail out and back as by Wednesday we wont be too far off shore.  As of this evening, Challenger is 97km from shore

Figure 11: Challenger's progress towards recovery. 97km and 5 days away from recovery

As always Force Wind Sea and Honor all and especially to Challenger

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

So the past day has been extremely hectic…

Yesterday, we had been investigating our options for our mission: recover or continue.  We had opened the options to flying to Sao Miguel for recovery, continuing on our journey but sticking close to the Azores for a possible recovery from Santa Maria, continuing and keeping a recovery at Madeira, or pushing our way to La Gomera in the Canaries.

One point that had risen was that we had used more battery over the past few days pulling the data off the glider, running tests, and flying shallow than we would flying normally.  After doing a rough analysis of battery power left, we potentially can cover between 1300 and 2300km.  The lower end of this estimate really cut it close on whether or not we would be able to make it to the Canaries.  Because of this, we had began to run tests flying deeper to see if the leak detect will go off again (basing that the leak will occur at extreme depths).  By flying deeper and adding more oscillations between surfacings, we can cover more distance with less battery usage and possibly draw out how far we can go.  So far today we have dove to 600m on a single yo and are going to strive for 2 yos at 600m.

While running these tests, we moved the way point to the east in an attempt to get some better progress as we make our way south, however it looks like the currents are so strong going to the North (courtesy of the cold eddy in the vicinity) that we were pushed to the north during the last segment (seen in the picture above).

Challenger then continued on his way after here until morning when we tried to push his limits further by diving to 650m.  Our battle weary glider however could not handle the extra pressure and around noon local time, Challengers aft leak detect went off again causing the glider to surface.

Challenger then sat at the surface while we again went through the process of pulling the more in depth files via satellite phone.  While at the surface, Challenger once again fell victim to the intensive currents in our area and got knocked around essentially being pushed in a circle.

After the files were pulled, Challenger’s way point was moved back to Sao Miguel where we will most likely recover from within the next few days.

Currently we are about an 8 hr trip from Sao Miguel out to where the glider is.  To try and counter the strong Northerly currents we are now diving to 300m over the past few hours.  So far there hasn’t been any aborts but hopefully this will be safe enough to get back for a recovery.

We will be keeping a keen eye on the weather and shipping traffic over the next days as Challenger limps back to shore.

At this moment, it looks like waves in the area are up around 5m which is far from ideal for a recovery mission, but this glider needs help and we are going to do our best to get it safe.

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos, & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on Challenger’s situation.

We are still limping along, diving to only half our normal inflection point (500m).  There has been no official word yet on whether or not we will be pulling the glider out of the water, but the way point has been set to Sao Miguel and Challenger is continuing on his way to port.  Over the past day he has been closing in on the Azores and is now 160km from port.

Finally looking at the surface currents, we are on the outer edge of the cold core eddy to our east so over the next day or so we may begin to see currents pushing us to the North.

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos, & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey All,

While for everyone else this merely an hour longer due to the clocks changing, it has felt like an eternity for the team working on the Challenger mission.  At 7:05 this morning, Challenger came to the surface to call in an abort saying there was a problem…

The report it sent back stated the glider had detected a leak in its aft compartment while at depth.  Challenger then sat on the surface for hours as the panicked team moved into action and began downloading all files over satellite connection so we could piece together the entire story and figure out what was going on.

Lauren and Chris (TWR) combed through the data after and concluded that on the second down cast of this mornings segment, the glider detected a leak at 940m below the surface (leak is defined as a voltage below 2.0V through the leak detect mechanism).  The resolution for the sensor was not too great as it was not being recorded frequently so we do not know when exactly the voltage dropped, but by the time the glider returned to the surface the voltage was back up to above 2.5V.  Dave Aragon of Rutgers also looked at the data to see if he could see anything from a different point of view but didn’t see anything suspicious.

Since the data analysis, there have been a number of test missions to see how the glider flies.  As of 11pm we have run test missions diving to 30m, 150m, and 500m as we ‘test the waters’ and all have been successful.

Now we must figure out what to do with this glider.  It really comes down to either continuing on the epic journey and putting this scare behind us, or taking the glider back to the Azores and pulling it out of the water for a servicing.  In the scenario where we go and pull the glider out of the water, a ship would leave from Ponta Delgada on the Island of Sao Miguel, Azores.  From Challenger’s current position, it would be about a 175 km trip out to the glider which would take about 9-10 hours making it a very long day going out and back to pick it up.

If we do pull it out of the water for servicing, Challenger still stands with the record as the 3rd longest flight in Rutgers History, which it will undoubtedly get more chances to break as it will still have at least 3 more stints of the Challenger mission: Sao Miguel to La Gomera, Canary Islands (stint 2, blue), La Gomera to Cape Verde (stint 3, green), and Cape Verde to the Americas (stint 4, magenta).  If we end up returning to the Azores, it only adds to the history of ocean exploration as these islands have been a crucial stopping point for countless voyages through the ages on long journeys.

We will update tomorrow on how the glider is doing and any decisions made.

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov

Hey guys,

Just a quick update on Challenger’s progress.

Yesterday afternoon we moved the way point to the South East so that we could begin making progress towards the Canaries.

Another deciding factor behind the movement of the way point was to avoid becoming caught in the bottom edge of the large warm core eddy to the North East of our position.  This would cause us to slow even more and possibly even drag us to the North.  Now, although we may be fighting the outermost edge of the cold eddy, the currents are weaker than the ones we would have encountered, and there is the possibility of a strong south flowing jet that will help us on our way.

Lauren Cooney, Antonio Ramos & Nilsen Strandskov