We have surpassed our Threshold Mission requirement of flying two years over 3 of the 9 biomes by a significant margin. In fact, we have completed at least two years of science acquisitions over 6 of the 9 biomes and 85% of the flights for year 2. Science team members were in the field conducting field sampling at Howland Forest and Duke Forest during the last round of flights in the East Coast

The P-band radar has successfully completed all of the flights in the East Coast campaign which are flown as local out of Harrisburg, PA.  These flights imaged Duke Forest twice, Harvard Forest thrice, and Howland Forest thrice. During both Duke Forest over-flights and on two of the three Howland Forest over-flights, JPL personnel were in the field collecting ground truth concurrent with the radar imaging.

We are in the midst of the second East Coast campaign of the season based out of Harrisburg, PA. So far we have flown over Duke Forest in North Carolina twice and Harvard/Howland Forests in New England once.

We will begin our second East Coast campaign this week acquiring data at Duke Forest in North Carolina and Harvard/Howland Forest in New England.  Science team members will be collecting field data in Howland Forest during the radar flights.  Science team members reported during the science telecon that they are making good progress generating higher level science products and refining their processing algorithms based on validation data.

We have successfully completed 5 of the 6 P-band radar observations and managed to avoid several rain storms over our sites. The Purdue aircraft with the Picarro greenhouse gas analyzer planned to fly over Harvard Forest on June 1. The flux towers and ground sensors at our sites are all operating well.

The summer campaign season began May 27. The first deployment is based out of Harrisburg, PA where we will observe Duke Forest, NC and Harvard Forest/Howland Forest in New England during the next 10-14 days. Weather on the East Coast will be challenging during the next few days as thunderstorms are predicted. We should have sufficient calendar margin to work around the rainy days and make three observations over each site. After Harrisburg, we will move our base of operation to Bozeman, MT where we will observe Metolius, OR and BERMS, Saskatchewan on alternating days.

AirMOSS successfully completed its science campaigns over Chamela, Mexico and MOISST, OK.

The P-band radar is currently based at Ellington Field, Texas while we conduct science campaigns in Chamela, Mexico and MOISST, Oklahoma. So far we have successfully flown two flights each to Chamela and MOISST respectively with one more observation left to each site this week. Weather in Chamela has been relatively dry while we have had rain in between two flights in Oklahoma, which should provide interesting data on the soil dry down after the rain.

Two engineering flights were completed the week of March 17 that fine-tuned the High Power amplifier controller firmware used to eliminate short non-transmit events during a data take.  The P-band radar is now on deployment in Cost Rica after a successful first flight on March 25 over La Selva, a tropical forest biome.  Two additional observations will be made over the next seven days before returning to Houston, Texas.  A Science Open House is scheduled for March 28 at the Liberia Airport in Costa Rica.

We conducted two P-band flights last week, the first being an engineering/calibration flight over Rosamond corner reflectors, and the second being a science flight over Tonzi Ranch in addition to lower altitude (30kft) Rosamond flight lines.  Preliminary assessment of the Rosamond data from the first flight showed that the radiometric calibration was quite stable. We also observed that the internal calibration signals for the H transmit channels were much improved due to the instrument rework last month, while that was not the case for the V transmit channels (needs more investigation).