Hej, it’s great that you’re still following us! Totally worth it, because Polar 5 started its next research flight with our crew today at shortly after 12 UTC.
Mika was of course very excited again and was the first to fasten his seat belt because he could hardly wait to take off again.
Today’s track took us northwest over the Lofoten Islands to underfly EarthCARE over the sea. By the way, on the map you can see today’s flight track as well as those of the first two flights. Cool, isn’t it? The western straight sections from north to south are always the sections where we underfly EarthCARE. The small squares are so-called radiation squares, which are used to calibrate the radiation measuring device “albedometer” in conditions without clouds above the aircraft.
We are slowly settling into a routine for operating the instruments and the procedures, but what you can see from the plane is of course still breathtaking! The view from the small glass dome on the ceiling of the plane was particularly beautiful today.
The conditions were great. At first we had clear skies and were able to enjoy the view of the winter wonderland snow-covered mountains until we reached a large cloud cover, above which we then had great measuring conditions for our campaign.

Tomorrow will be the fourth flight, this time towards the Bothnian Sea, which is still partly covered in sea ice. We’re sure it will be great.
So, stay tuned 🙂