The SUCCESS field project is a NASA funded program which is aimed at achieving a better understanding of contrails produced by subsonic aircraft, cirrus clouds, and atmospheric chemistry. The experiment is co-sponsored by NASA's Subsonic Assessment program and the Radiation Sciences Program. The field work was held 8 April 1996 to 10 May 1996.

The goals of the SUCCESS project are six fold:

1) To gain a better understanding of the radiative properties of cirrus clouds and contrails; so that satellite information can better determine their influence on the Earth's radiation budget.

2) To determine how cirrus clouds form.

3) To obtain a better understanding of how contrails, produced by subsonic aircraft, affect the formation of cirrus clouds

4) and to determine if these "contrail formed" cirrus have any climatological significance.

5) Test new instrumentation.

6) Pave the way for future studies on related topics.

The crystal images on this web page were collected via the DRI Replicator System. The Replicator System was mounted on NASA's DC-8 which trailed a Boeing 757 by approximately fifty seconds (i.e. a contrail crystal growth of approximately fifty seconds). The automated analysis and images were done using the DRI Automated Replicator Analysis System, performed by Matt Meyers, a former graduate student in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Nevada, Reno.