The OIB team completed the sea ice “Chukchi West” mission today. During pre-mission preparations we noted that the weather (forecast and satellite images) degraded from the previous forecasts but Chukchi West is a high priority mission and our time in Fairbanks is limited, therefore the decision was made to attempt the mission. During the flight today we did encounter widespread regions of low clouds and fog, and we spent significant time at reduced altitude (from our nominal 1500′ above the ice) to continue to collect optical camera and laser data below the clouds. Data was successfully collected over much of the science lines, with only a few regions of thicker clouds blocking the optical sensors.











