The NASA Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel (HS3) is a multi-year investigation aimed at examining hurricane formation and intensity change. This field campagin involves five phases spanning a five year period, 2011- 2015. The Global Hawk (GH) aircraft is an unmanned, high-altitude, long endurance aircraft capable of flying at altitudes above 60,000 feet for up to 30 hour flights. It  is equipped with an NCAR/NOAA dropsonde system specially designed for remote operation. The GH dropsonde system was developed by the Earth Observing Laboratory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR/EOL) for NOAA as a collaborative effort. The dropsonde system is a fully automated aircraft dropsonde system controlled from the ground which measures vertical profiles of atmospheric thermodynamic and wind parameters. The GH dropsonde systemcan dispense up to eighty-eight Miniature dropsondes during a single flight, and the aircraft data system can track up to eight dropsondes in the air simultaneously.

HS3 2011      Sept 9 and Sept 14, 2011
HS3 2012      Sept 7 - 26, 2012
HS3 2013      Aug 20 - Sept 23, 2013
HS3 2014      Aug 26 - Sept 30, 2014

Please visit the NASA HS3 website.