A four-person University of Alaska Fairbanks team plans to land an unmanned aircraft in the crater of an active Costa Rica volcano this week to sample gas escaping from the soil. The flight will occur as part of an international gathering to better understand the volcano’s plumbing system. The team will use two UAF drones, […]
A new icing tower at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute will help aerospace engineers figure out how to enable drones to fly safely in icy weather. That’s important as Alaska accelerates an effort to use drones for deliveries to remote communities and for emergency response in harsh weather conditions. The Alaska Center for […]
A new radar-based volcano monitoring system developed by the University of Alaska Fairbanks and U.S. Geological Survey will expand across the U.S. and beyond. The expansion, funded by NASA, could lead to earlier detection of volcanic unrest. The Alaska Volcano Observatory at UAF has been using a prototype of this system, named VolcSARvatory, since early 2022. Its […]
Two NASA aurora research rockets launched from Poker Flat Research Range earlier this month provided good data for learning more about the fastest observable variations of the solar wind-driven light displays. One rocket gathered information about flickering aurora, and the other gathered data about fast-pulsating aurora. Flickering auroras are fast, localized and associated with higher-frequency […]