This spring, NASA’s S-MODE (Sub-Mesoscale Ocean Dynamics Experiment) began conducting its final plane, ship, and ocean glider campaign to better understand the ocean’s impact on Earth’s climate.
NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley invites media to interview S-MODE experts Erin Czech, Dr. J. Thomas Farrar, and Dr. Dragana Perkovic-Martin on Thursday, April 27, to talk about their contributions to this suborbital investigation.
In April, the research vessel Sally Ride set sail from San Diego to a science operations area about 150 miles off the coast of San Francisco, accompanied by a fleet of autonomous marine research vehicles. Since then, three research aircraft have flown repeatedly overhead to map surface currents and winds, sea surface temperature, and ocean color, while the vessel and the autonomous vehicles collect in situ data from the ocean below.
Data from the air and sea vehicles will help improve Earth system models, and complement another NASA program: SWOT (Surface Water and Ocean Topography), which is a satellite mission to make the first global survey of Earth’s surface water.
Media requesting an interview with Czech, Dr. Farrar, or Dr. Perkovic-Martin should email the Ames Office of Communications at arc-dl-newsroom@mail.nasa.gov or call the newsroom at 650-604-4789.
Czech is a project manager for the Earth Science Project Office at Ames and manages the S-MODE mission.
Dr. Farrar is the S-MODE principal investigator, responsible for establishing the scientific priorities of the investigation and for the overall planning and execution of the program. Farrar is a senior scientist in the Department of Physical Oceanography at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Dr. Perkovic-Martin is the team lead of the DopplerScatt instrument at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. DopplerScatt provides simultaneous measurements of ocean vector winds and surface currents estimates.
