Supporting the NASA/New Zealand remote-sensing airborne mission: Rongowai

Supporting the NASA/New Zealand remote-sensing airborne mission: Rongowai

Mike Laverick¹, Chris Seal¹, Delwyn Moller², Christopher Ruf³, Scott Gleason⁴, Xiaoyou Lin², Stephen Musko³, Andrew O’Brien⁵, Matthew Wilson⁶, Rajasweta Datta<sup>6

1</sup>Centre for eResearch, University Of Auckland New Zealand
²Department of Electrical Computer & Software Engineering, University Of Auckland New Zealand
³University of Michigan USA
⁴Southwest Research Institute USA
⁵Ohio State University USA
⁶University of Canterbury New Zealand

Abstract

This talk discusses our work at the University of Auckland (UoA) to support the payload and science operations for the remote-sensing airborne mission Rongowai (te reo Māori: rongo meaning to sense, wai meaning water) using the Nectar research cloud infrastructure.

Rongowai is a collaboration between NASA, the New Zealand Space Agency, and Air New Zealand to fly a next-generation Global Navigation Satellite System Reflectometry (GNSS-R) receiver on a commercial aircraft to collect climate data. The payload collects reflection data from the surface of Aotearoa, used to measure soil moisture, inundation, flooding, and even coastal erosion.

To support the mission the UoA is facilitating post-flight payload communication, the processing of unstructured binary data into Level-0 and higher science data products (L0+), data hosting, and payload health monitoring.

The payload has been fully supported since first-flight in mid-September 2022 and has experienced several major payload and workflow code updates, in addition to an aircraft lightning strike! Rongowai currently produces a total of ~175GB of binary-through-to L1 products produced per month, with high-level products about to be made available to the public.

Biography

Mike is a Senior eResearch Solutions Specialist for the Centre for eResearch at the University of Auckland.
Formerly an atomic astrophysicist at KU Leuven, Mike now uses his experience in research and programming
to help tackle the ever-growing digital needs of researchers. As part of the Rongowai mission, a collaboration
between NASA and the New Zealand Space Agency, Mike has helped develop operational data workflows
and visualisation tools. Mike is also a Python aficionado, helping to train and upskill researchers as a
Carpentries workshop instructor.