Category: Polar Service

Start of HALO mission "TACTS"

20 August 2012

The new German research aircraft HALO was brought into service by the German Minister for Education and Research, Miss Annette Schavan on Monday, 20th of August 2012. Right after the ceremonial act, the aircraft of type Gulfstream G550 was prepared to perform the scientific mission TACTS, which amongst other locations will be held at the Cape Verde Islands.

The aim of TACTS is to investigate transport and composition of the upper troposphere / lowermost stratosphere („Transport And Composition in the UT/LMS”).

The following experiments of the TACTS configuration were supported by OPTIMARE to get a flight permission:

• Experiment „FISH“ of Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany
• Experiment „ISOWAT“ of Karlsruher Institut für Technolgie (KIT) Karlsruhe, Germany
• Experiment „miniDOAS“ of Institut für Umweltphysik (IUP), Universität Heidelberg, Germany
• Experiment „NOy“ of Institut für Physik der Atmosphäre (IPA), DLR Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany
• Experiment „PAN-Massenspekrometer“ of IPA, DLR Oberpfaffenhofen Germany

We are proud to be part of this campaign and we would like to wish all the best to the participating scientists as well to the crew of the German Aerospace Center. Hopefully, the new platform will perform successful flights and produce valuable data.

If you are also interested in having your experiment operating on HALO, please feel free to contact us.

Experiment miniDOAS of Institut für Umweltphysik in Heidelberg, Germany