20 Years ago, Henry Stommel described the serene Nonamessett Mission Control Center for the fictional Slocum Mission.

http://tos.org/oceanography/issues/issue_archive/issue_pdfs/2_1/2.1_stommel.pdf

The last 22 hours were probably more like his initial control center crammed into the attic of the Bigelow Building at Woods Hole, the same attic I sat in to write my Ph.D. thesis.  Several people predicted that the last 22 hours will make or break this mission.   They were all correct. 

First, we must thank the 6 people – 2 crew, 4 scientific party – that sailed on the Nevertheless out to The Scarlet Knight (a.k.a. RU27) to find out exactly what was going on.  Their dedication and hard work, all within tight space and time constraints, answered the major remaining questions from last year’s flight of RU17.  Specifically, what organisms are growing on the glider, how many, and how do the different coatings work to protect us?  With this information, we can begin designing the future global fleet of shallow Slocum gliders.  From Rutgers, Tina, Chip, Dan and Dena made up the scientific party, Hans and his brother made up the crew.  Duncan from Mid Atlantic Yacht Supply arranged the entire trip.  Without their work, we would not be smiling tonight.

Second we thank the community that got us this far. It was Rutgers Alumni that provided the initial seed money.  In various forms, this was matched by Teledyne Webb Research, NOAA, and Rutgers itself.  The scientific community on both sides of the Atlantic has provided us with better weathermaps and roadmaps on where to fly.  In the U.S., we use Oceanweather for winds and waves, the NOAA National Hurricane Center for tropical storms and hurricanes, Rutgers, UMaine and NASA for satellite SST and ocean color imagery, the University of Colorado for satellite altimetry, NRL and the HYCOM Consortium for ocean forecasts.  From overseas, we use data from the University of Azores, the University of Las Palmas on Gran Canaria, and the Nansen Center in Bergen, Norway. Antonio has already sent his congrats to the field crew on the Nevertheless along with a the latest ocean color image and guidance on a route to help keep us barnacle free.  The engineering community has built us an even better glider than last year.  Teledyne Webb Research gets significant credit here.  At the post-RU17 hotwash at Teledyne Webb in Falmouth last fall, we went over everything that went right and everything that we knew went wrong with RU17.  That feedback loop to the manufacturer is critical to the rapid transition of all gliders into the global fleets we are now building. To the core engineering work from Teledyne Webb, we add the improvements and additional testing of the lithium batteries by Electromchem, and the different antifouling coatings and guidance provided by Severn Marine Technologies, Mid Mountain Materials, and E-Paint.  This year we know where to go, and RU27 has the power to get us there. We are still over 1 month ahead of the pace set by RU17 last year. 

Lastly, we thank the full range of agencies that have supported the development of the COOLroom.  Starting with a converted dive closet in a series of ONR-sponsored Coastal Predictive Skill Experiments at the Tuckerton field station in the late 1990s, it has evolved into the present main campus location that serves as the collaboratory for ongoing observing projects sponsored by federal (NOAA, DHS, NSF, ONR, DoD, NOPP, DoE, NASA….) and state (NJDEP, NJBPU) agencies and foundations (Moore, Vetlesen). The COOLroom was the communication hub for this trip, controling RU27 even while the divers were holding it, and calling in to every world expert we needed when we needed them for critical guidance. The COOLroom serves as the hub of activity for our growing list of collaborators at U.S. and international glider ports.  In the very early part of this mission, there are the additional glider ports at UMass and UMaryland if we needed them for a quick abort.  This specific flight uses international glider ports in Halifax with Dalhousie & Satlantic, the Azores and the Canaries.  In fact, graduate students from the Azores and Canaries are joining us September 1 to spend a semester at Rutgers, learning how to fly gliders and helping with the final 1/3 of this mission.  What we learn through collaborations with these glider ports is shared in collobarations with other glider ports in the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico in the tropics, at Palmer Station in Antarctica, and Svalbard, Norway in the Arctic.

Today this growing international community of friendly collaborators earned itself a victory. The Scarlet Knight has been declared fit to fly. The COOLroom was like a NASA mission control center movie – “Clayton, fit to fly?”, “Fit to fly”, “Oscar, fit to fly?”, “Fit to fly”, “Dave, fit to fly?”, “Fit to fly”, ”Tina, she is fit to fly, pull your divers. Dave, send her down.” We are back on the mission and are continuing our journey, having never left the water during the 22 hour data gathering visit by the Nevertheless.  Antonio’s email from this morning demonstrates the community is ready to continue and is on the job. In the final third of this mission, we will continue to encounter challenges along the way. Our international team grows more seasoned by the day, and has proven itself today by collecting the most important data of this mission – the biological fouling data on what works and what doesn’t on a shallow upper ocean glider.

We have a great victory to celebrate.  RU27 has flown from U.S waters to European, and was just checked out for the final leg of its journey.  We are heading east, and we have a new motto we have learned from our friends in the Canaries –  Force wind and honour all.

Good luck RU27.