A seafaring drone can sail where people can’t: straight into a hurricane.
During the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season (it’s predicted to be busy), that’s exactly what scientists will do: send marine robots into the heart of churning cyclones. The unprecedented mission aims to improve researchers’ understanding of how hurricanes rapidly intensify into monstrous storms with destructive winds and deadly flooding. If all goes as planned, the drones will venture through the storm’s most violent winds, which circle the eye of a cyclone, called an eyewall.
“We want to go straight through — we want to go through the eyewall,” said Gregory Foltz, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) oceanographer who’s working on the mission.
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