The first week of our Central/South America deployment has been full of excitement both from the scientific and logistic standpoints.  We’ve successfully conducted 5 science flights, imaging volcanoes in Central America, Colombia, and Ecuador as well as the Panama Canal Watershed.  

While we were in Panama, we received news from NASA HQ on Friday morning that the Turrialba volcano in Costa Rica had just erupted and this unique opportunity gives NASA scientists the chance to observe volcanic deformation and other eruptive features over short time scales.  We were able to rearrange our schedule and observe the Turrialba volcano on Saturday, March 14.  The data acquired on March 14 as well as the prior observation on March 11 has been sent back to JPL for priority processing and we expect to have some preliminary results within 48 hours (by March 19).