Press Releases
People will go to great lengths in the name of science. One decided to hop on a bicycle and crisscross the continent for weeks. After accepting a position with the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Robbie Herrick, 39, set out on a 4,500-mile journey with nothing more than two bags and a bicycle. 
The winds that swirl above the planet’s seas are packed with information. Scientists across the globe are using this wind information in studies as diverse as global weather patterns and seafood harvesting. Currently, information on sea winds is downlinked in the Interior at the Alaska Satellite Facility, a part of the Geophysical Institute.
The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) has appointed UAF alumna Nettie La Belle-Hamer as director of the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Facility. La Belle-Hamer earned her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in space physics at UAF in 1994 and 1988, respectively.
The Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) has appointed UAF alumna Nettie La Belle-Hamer as director of the Alaska Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) Facility. La Belle-Hamer earned her Ph.D. and Master of Science degrees in space physics at UAF in 1994 and 1988,
respectively.
Scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute will be teaming with those at ten other institutions to take part in the Aeronomy of Ice in the Mesosphere (AIM) mission over the next six years. The mission, recently funded by NASA as part of the Small Explorer program, will
study clouds at the edge of space to resolve why they form and why they have been increasing over the last 30 years.
Near real-time, high-resolution optical satellite images supplied by the University of Alaskaʼs Geographic Information Network of Alaska (GINA) will soon aid firefighters to battle flames raging in Alaska.
Students at the University of Alaska Fairbanks are collaborating with students from Toyama Prefectural University and Tokai University in Japan to prepare a rocket scheduled to launch from Poker Flat Research Range on March 4th.
Some experiments never end. Especially ones involving plastic objects released in the far north.
In late July 2011, Paul Boots, a supervisor at an oilfield on Alaska’s North Slope, found a small, yellow plastic disc on a creekbed. Scientists 30 years ago tossed the disc into the sea as part of a study on arctic oil spills.
Boots, who works at the large gravel pad that hosts the Badami oil field, was with his coworkers on an annual cleanup day along a nameless creek just west of the gravel pad.
“I was enjoying a beautiful day and strayed a bit farther than most in my search for ‘fugitive emissions’ (everything we pick up has been blown off of our pad),” he wrote in an email. “I found the disc about 50 yards from the saltwater.”
Boots at first thought the saucer was part of a weather balloon. Then he saw a typewritten message: “One Dollar Reward on Return of Serial Number With Date Found, Location, Your Name and Address to Geophysics Institute, Univ. of Alaska, Fairbanks.”
On a clear, cold night two winters ago in Fort Yukon, Carl Andersen watched a rocket he helped design pierce the upper atmosphere. He and three other scientists shot pictures as the rocket ejected bright puffs of chemicals in an inverted V formation more than 60 miles up.
A time capsule of satellite imagery of the earth will become available to scientists this month.
