After a year's worth of planning science flights, culling over lessons from the 2016 campaign, and preparing for a new set of logistical challenges in the country of Sao Tome and Principe, the NASA ORACLES 2017 campaign officially deployed from NASA Wallops Flight Facility on Tuesday, August 1, 2017. As I write this, the NASA P-3 aircraft - the research plane containing all of the science instrumentation - is currently awaiting its second major repair in less than two weeks. A day before the originally scheduled deployment (July 27), the crew found an issue with the bearings in Engine #3. Walking around the hangar between July 27 and July 31, the maintenance crews worked tirelessly making the necessary fixes & ensuring the safety of the aircraft for science & flight operations.

The flight out of Wallops Island and into Barbados, our first stop of the transit to Sao Tome, went off without a problem. About the first hour and a half was the most exciting part of the flight from a science perspective: we flew over the remnants of Tropical Storm Emily. The APR-3 (Airborne 3rd Generation Precipitation Radar) recorded several minutes of heavy precipitation, and many of the other instrument teams were excited with the data collected during this flight. Shortly after flying through the remnants of Emily, the W-band computer froze up and unfortunately did not work for the remainder of the flight. We hope to know more about the freezing issue sometime soon, but until our next full transit flight, we will have to keep our fingers crossed.

Did I mention our first stop in the transit was Barbados?! The days leading up to the transit flight involved a lot of "stop and go". Instrument teams had a few touch-up activities, and many of them also had abstracts to submit for the Dec/Jan AGU/AMS conferences (myself included). When a rest stop such as Barbados can be worked into the master plan, believe me when I say everyone took advantage of the opportunity to enjoy themselves.

The original plan was to only stay for an evening. We arrived ~4:30pm local time and had to be ready to leave the hotel by 4:30am the next morning. Everything seemed to be going smoothly at that point, however, about 70 miles into our flight to Ascension Island (stop #2 in the transit to Sao Tome), this happened:

According to pilot Gerrit Everson, Engine #2 (different engine from the initial problem) experienced a bleed air pump problem - hot air built up inside the engine and triggered a fire warning (there was no actual fire in the engine, contrary to what the Barbados national media reported). So here we are... at the beautiful Hilton Barbados enjoying what will likely be a 3 day stay, which is enough time to give everyone one "hard down day" and a second day to fix the engine & access instruments. If all goes well, we should be in Sao Tome by Sunday.

If there's one thing I've learned over the last week, we should REALLY appreciate all the time and effort that everyone is investing in the logistics of this project. An emergency landing in a foreign country is stressful enough, especially when the issue involves the engine of the plane you're on. But upon landing, one could easily forget the stress involved with, for example, getting back into the country, ensuring 20+ people have comfortable lodging and accommodations, all while working as fast as possible to arrange an emergency shipment so everyone can get to their final destination in time. The people in charge of the logistics - Bernie Luna, Janet Letchworth, Sue McFadden, Dan Chirica, Kelly Griffin, Diane Ziemet, and several others - are rockstars, and I can't emphasize how helpful they've been to everyone involved (which is over 100 people!). I'll conclude by saying this: I'm beyond blessed to be surrounded by a wonderful group of people - fellow scientists, grad students, professors, managers - they've all helped me feel at home and make the most of a very exciting opportunity. Hopefully by Sunday's end, we will all be together in Sao Tome and ready to science as hard as we can!