A crew of UMBC physicists is living and working 14 miles off the Virginia Coast aboard the Chesapeake Light..
Tracking a Satellite from the Sea
14 miles offshore from Virginia Beach, UMBC Assistant Professor of Physics Wallace McMillan and a rotating crew of scientists are firing lasers into the night sky and launching weather balloons by day to make sure a new multi-billion-dollar NASA research satellite is working properly.
For two months, McMillan and his crew are taking turns living and working aboard the Chesapeake Light, a 1960�s-era U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse platform with a panoramic view of the Atlantic. Chesapeake Light looks a bit like an oil-drilling rig, perched on a rusty steel frame 75 feet above 34-foot-deep waters.
�We provide product validation,� says McMillan. �We�re measuring air temperature, water vapor content, sea surface temperature, and so on, around the clock, and then comparing those to the same measurements taken by AIRS.� AIRS is short for the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, which was developed in part by McMillan�s UMBC colleague, Larrabee Strow. It is one of several instruments about AQUA, a NASA satellite launched in May that is designed to give the best looks yet at the Earth�s water cycle.
So what good does an Atlantic Ocean lighthouse do for a NASA satellite orbiting the upper atmosphere? �As it happens, the ocean makes a nice, uniform target in the infrared portion of the spectrum where AIRS sees,� McMillan explains. �Making comparisons over the ocean makes for the easiest, thus the first, comparisons we want to make.�
The accommodations on the Chesapeake Light couldn�t be described as cozy � steel is the main motif. But it does have a kitchen, a bathroom, six compact bedrooms, various work rooms, two generators, plus a rec room with a pool table.
Still, the view here is a lot better than a cubicle or lab. The Chesapeake�s catwalk is the favorite spot to watch some spectacular sunsets, the occasional rainbow, dolphins, sea turtles and flotillas of Virginia Beach-area fishermen chasing big schools near the platform.
When they aren�t working, McMillan�s protégés find ways to keep themselves entertained. A photo gallery kept on McMillan�s UMBC homepage shows grad student Kurt Lightner of Ellicott City, doing a strange dance as he launched the day�s weather balloon. �I was trying to appease Thor. You know, the Norse god of weather,� he says with a grin.