Skytruthing the Bakken - Field Report
Chicago, Illinois: In partnership with Space For All, and funded
by generous support from donors all across the country, SkyTruth recently launched a
mission document natural gas flaring in North Dakota’s Bakken oil shale. We are
pleased to announce that our attempt to send an instrument package over the oil
fields on a high-altitude balloon was a success and as we make our separate
ways home from the middle of the country we are starting the long process of
sifting through the 19.8 gigabytes of video, photos, and sensor data that
we collected from the rig. We recorded
four hours of HD video from three GoPro video cameras before the devices froze
up in the chill of the upper atmosphere, 606 still images from a small,
point-and-shoot digital camera programmed to take a photo every ten seconds, and
over 48,193 atmospheric readings.
31- late afternoon, Sept. 1: We spent a feverish 24 hours assembling
hardware, wiring sensors, troubleshooting software, triple-checking all
recording systems, and running flight-path models which seemed insistent that
the balloon flirt dangerously close Lake Sakakawea to the north of the main
oilfield. Finally satisfied with a favorable flight path and all hardware
loaded up, we finally rolled out to the Lewis and Clark Wildlife Management
area on the floodplain of the Missouri River just south of the city of
Williston.
unwieldy triangular aluminum frame of the payload transported upright from the
motel parking lot (above), four large red tanks of compressed hydrogen strapped down
tight, and a spread of laptops, radios, and cameras worthy of a TV show. Locals asked us about the rig at the gas station, traffic leaving the
wildlife area slowed down passing our launch site, and a curious ranger closing
the gates for the day inquired about the large latex sphere billowing from bed
of our beat-up rental pickup truck. But everyone we talked to was fascinated by
the idea of a weather balloon and actually seeing the operation in progress.
Just before launch, the balloon inflated, parachute fixed between the ballon and the payload (the balloon bursts when it reaches its maximum altitude), and the hydrogen tanks to the right.
Sept. 1: Astonishingly, we released the balloon a few minutes ahead of
schedule, carrying our payload up into the twilight as flights of ducks
splashed down in the wetlands around us and oil field traffic roared up and
down US Route 84 a few hundred meters away. However, as it soared into the
darkening sky, our primary radio tracking system immediately ceased transmitting
its location, leaving us with only the projected flight path and our backup
satellite-based SPOT transmitter to find the rig when it returns to earth. Our
flight predictor estimated a 3.5 hour flight, and a drop point far outside of
the active oil field, 131 miles away by road.
away, there was nothing to do but leap in our vehicles and race to the
predicted landing zone. As darkness fell, the lights of oil rigs began to stand
out in start contrast to the once quiet wheat fields and pastures. Hurrying
south through Watford City, the narrow roads under construction were
intimidating because of the endless stream of trucks hauling double tankers of
oil, chemicals, and oilfield equipment. To the left and right, oil rigs drilled
away into the night, while natural gas flares burned brightly in the otherwise
inky darkness.
appeared to calm down, moving our predicted landing point south and west of the
original prediction. The lead chase vehicle proceeded halfway between the
original predicted landing point while another held back at the town of
Killdeer, just north of the new predictions. During this time, the satellite
transmitter predictably blacked-out, leaving us to wait a nail-biting 110
minutes for any trace of rig.
a new update, 36 minutes from the lead chase car, but only about 13 miles south
of the original projected landing place. Both teams raced toward the latest
coordinates, checking on smartphones every 10 minutes for the latest
coordinates. As it gently wafted back to earth, Dan Kumor of Space For All and
David Manthos from SkyTruth searched back and forth along a desolate road in
the middle of pitch black fields for any sign of the payload. Upon receiving
two transmissions in the same place, it became clear the rig had landed, and
was only about 100 meters from the road.
Sept. 2: Following raw GPS coordinates from a smartphone, Kumor and Manthos
paced off the latitude and longitude of the transmitter’s location, wading
through tall grass right up to the completely intact payload in the middle of a
field. Once back at the road and joined up with the second recovery vehicle we
pried open the camera cases (in the low-pressure of high-altitude flight, the
air even inside a waterproof case can leak OUT, making it difficult to open the
now vacuum-sealed boxes) and plugged in the camera cards to see what we got.
the flight, but it appears we captured much of the oil field we were hoping to
image. Furthermore, we found that it is indeed possible to piece together a
relatively inexpensive experiment to get the SkyTruth view on the big picture
of environmental impacts. We also successfully completed groundtruthing of
numerous sites in the Bakken, validating the infrared detections we monitor
from NOAA’s Suomi NPP satellite. We have mountains of data to go through and
hours of footage to process, but stay tuned for more updates and news about our
final products from this mission.
Source: http://blog.skytruth.org/2013/09/skytruth-the-bakken-field-report.html
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