PACE-PAX

The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX) was a field campaign to gather data to support PACE mission validation. A secondary objective was to help validate data from JAXA/ESA’s Earth Cloud, Aerosol, and Radiation Explorer (EarthCARE) mission. PACE-PAX was conducted in September, 2025 in Southern and Central California and nearby coastal regions. 81 flight hours were flown on the NASA ER-2 operating out of the NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center and 60 on the CIRPAS Twin Otter from Marina Municipal Airport. A NOAA vessel, the R/V Shearwater, operated16 day trips out of Santa Barbara, while a privately owned sailboat, the R/V Blissfully, conducted 9 sorties out of Long Beach, CA. Numerous other entities cooperated to make coincident observations, many of which were members of the PACE Validation Science Team (PVST). 

More details are available at the PACE-PAX mission website. 

Ocean data archive, DOI: 10.5067/SeaBASS/PACE-PAX/DATA001

Atmosphere data archive, DOI: 10.5067/SUBORBITAL/PACE-PAX/DATA001

Knobelspiesse, K., Cairns, B., Cetinic, I., and LeBlanc, S.: The PACE Postlaunch Airborne eXperiment (PACE-PAX): post campaign report, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20250011273,  2025.

Knobelspiesse, K. D., Alfter, J., Cairns, B., Cetinić, I., LeBlanc, S., Nicholas, S., and Ueyama, R.: Field campaign design and implementation with traceability matrix decision support, Journal of Atmospheric and Oceanic Technology, e250079, https://doi.org/10.1175/JTECH-D-25-0079.1, 2026.