New instrument for NASA unmanned aircraft
Scientists at the University of Hertfordshire have designed and built a new type of instrument for climate research that is capable of detecting and analysing microscopic airborne particles at altitudes twice as high as a commercial jet flies.The instrument, called an Aerosol Ice Interface Transition Spectrometer (AIITS), has been built specifically to fly on NASA’s unique Global Hawk unmanned aircraft, based in California and capable of flying continuously for twenty hours or more at altitudes up to 65,000ft. Developed by the University’s Centre for Atmospheric and Instrumentation