23 - NORCE

The previous partner, Norut, merged with NORCE on April 1 2019.

Norut is a Norwegian research group that produces knowledge with practical applicability relevant to the High North within technology and social science. Norut has 64 employees where the earth observation department is the largest with 27. Norut has performed research and development on unmanned aircraft technologies since 2005. Together with commercial partners Norut has developed the Cryowing drone family with aircraft ranging from 2 to 60 kg and range up to 1200 km. Norut has performed operations and collected environmental data in Antarctica, Greenland, Iceland, Finland, Svalbard, Norway and from ships. Research is done on robust platforms, sensors and remote sensing services for arctic use. Norut has a range of sensor packages, UV/VIS/IR cameras, hyperspectral imagers, ground penetrating radars, laser altimeters, meteorological sensors and aerosols.

Role in the project

NORCE plans an extensive field campaign based out of Ny-Ålesund, where NORCE (previously Norut)  established the Arctic Unmanned Aircraft Facility in 2015 (WP2). This facility consists of an aircraft hanger/workshop and an instrumented operations room. The plan for the campaign is to deploy for 3 weeks in the Aug/Sept timeframe, to measure sea-ice properties in transects northwest across the Fram Strait coordinated with satellite overpasses. Properties to be measured are; sea-ice concentration; sea- ice thickness distribution, snow depth on sea-ice and sea-ice drift velocities. The plane planned used for the work is the Cryowing Explorer a 60 kg, 5.2 meter wingspan gas powered aircraft developed by Norut, instrumented with laser altimeter, a survey grade GPS and a ground penetrating radar. The campaign is co-financed by the NRC projects ARCEx and CIRFA in addition to the Intaros Horizon2020 project.