Category: Airborne Science

Students Take on Airborne Field Research with NASA

The gusty wind didn’t make it easy to hold tight to a balloon so large. The balloon, a scientific instrument called an ozonesonde, was about to be released into the atmosphere above the Texas Gulf Coast by students from NASA’s SARP (Student Airborne Research Program), which concluded its summer session July 27. The balloon’s job […]

NASA Scientists Take to Air and Space to Study Arctic Sea Ice

This month, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California are testing a spacecraft sensor that will help measure how quickly Arctic sea ice is disappearing. And while that instrument won’t launch for another year, scientists started preparing for its use during a recent field campaign in the Canadian wilderness. Researchers spent two weeks […]

NASA’s 777 Aircraft Returns Home with Science Flights on the Horizon

NASA’s Boeing 777 has returned to the agency’s fleet after undergoing heavy structural modifications as it transforms from a giant passenger plane into the agency’s next-generation airborne science laboratory. After a check flight and a three-hour transit from Waco, the aircraft returned to NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, on April 22. Since January […]

NASA Science Flights Venture to Improve Severe Winter Weather Warnings

A team of NASA scientists deployed on an international mission designed to better understand severe winter storms. The North American Upstream Feature-Resolving and Tropopause Uncertainty Reconnaissance Experiment, or NURTURE, is an airborne campaign that uses a suite of remote sensing instruments to collect atmospheric data on winter weather with a goal of improving the models […]

NASA, Aerospace Corporation Study Sharpens Focus on Ammonia Emissions

The pungent gas contributes to fine airborne particulate pollution, which endangers human health when inhaled and absorbed in the bloodstream.  A recent study led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation shows how high-resolution maps of ground-level ammonia plumes can be generated with airborne sensors, highlighting a […]

NASA, Aerospace Corporation Study Sharpens Focus on Ammonia Emissions

The pungent gas contributes to fine airborne particulate pollution, which endangers human health when inhaled and absorbed in the bloodstream.  A recent study led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the nonprofit Aerospace Corporation shows how high-resolution maps of ground-level ammonia plumes can be generated with airborne sensors, highlighting a […]

NASA Aircraft to Make Low-Altitude Flights in Mid-Atlantic, California

From Sunday, June 22 to Wednesday, July 2, two research aircraft will make a series of low-altitude atmospheric research flights near Philadelphia, Baltimore, and some Virginia cities, including Richmond, as well as over the Los Angeles Basin, Salton Sea, and Central Valley in California. Pilots will operate the aircraft at altitudes lower than typical commercial […]

NASA Tracks Snowmelt to Improve Water Management

As part of a science mission tracking one of Earth’s most precious resources – water – NASA’s C-20A aircraft conducted a series of seven research flights in March that can help researchers track the process and timeline as snow melts and transforms into a freshwater resource. The agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) […]