NASA is getting ready to fly two planes over mid-Atlantic states and parts of California, where they will be carrying out special maneuvers at a close distance while collecting valuable data about our changing planet.
The two research aircraft, named P-3 Orion (N426NA) and a King Air B200 (N46L), are set to fly over Baltimore, Philadelphia, the Virginia cities of Hampton, Hopewell, and Richmond, in addition to the Los Angeles Basin, Salton Sea, and Central Valley, according to NASA. The flights will take place along the eastern coast between Sunday, June 22 and Thursday, June 26, and in California between Sunday, June 29 to Wednesday, July 2.
It’ll be a good opportunity to catch the two planes as they will fly at lower altitudes than most commercial flights, while pulling off specialized maneuvers like vertical spirals between 1,000 and 10,000 feet (304 to 3,048 meters), circling above power plants, landfills, and urban areas. The planes will also make missed approaches at local airports and low-altitude flybys along runways to collect air samples near the surface.
The P-3, operated out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, is a four-engine turboprop aircraft, carrying six science instruments. The King Air B200 is a twin-engine aircraft owned by Dynamic Aviation and contracted by NASA. The aircraft will carry out 40 hours of data collection for NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) on each U.S. coast.
SARP is an eight-week summer internship program at NASA that provides undergraduate students with hands-on experience in various scientific areas. The low-altitude flights will be used to gather atmospheric data through the on board science instruments, which will be operated by the students.
“Despite SARP being a learning experience for both the students and mentors alike, our P-3 is being flown and performing maneuvers in some of most complex and restricted airspace in the country,” Brian Bernth, chief of flight operations at NASA Wallops, said in a statement. “Tight coordination and crew resource management is needed to ensure that these flights are executed with precision but also safely.”
NASA uses low altitude flights for Earth science, gathering high-resolution data that satellites can’t capture at the same level of detail. These flights have typically supported research on climate change, natural disasters, and atmospheric science. The upcoming flights will take place near populated areas, so there will be plenty of chances to see the aircraft flying overhead.
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