More than 50 journalists and social
media followers learned about how a
small fleet of highly specialized
aircraft support NASA's earth science
and environmental mission at a recent
Airborne Science showcase at NASA's
Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards
Air Force Base and it's Science Aircraft
Operations Facility in nearby Palmdale
California. In addition to being able to
see many of the aircraft and instruments
used in those campaigns, participants
were briefed on a half dozen current or
near-term missions and the overall goals
of NASA's Earth Science Program. With
what we do on the Airborne Science
Program really is enmeshed and critical
with what we do with our space missions
as well. We're NASA, we launch rockets. But,
primarily from the Science Directorate
at NASA and Earth Science in particular,
our main goal is to try to advance our
understanding of the science itself.
Among the current or near-term missions
covered in detail where the Discover-AQ
air quality mission in progress over
California's San Joaquin Valley, the
PHOTEX mission that is evaluating
three sophisticated polarimeters for use
on a future space satellite and the
Airborne Tropical Tropopause Experiment,
a multi-year campaign that's
investigating how the chemistry of upper
atmosphere regions, is changing Earth in
a warming climate.  Again, ATTREX is a
multi-agency multinational campaign,
we've got investigators from NASA from
NOAA, multiple universities, private
companies. Data from this will be made
public and be, hopefully be used
improve the climate forecasts.  NASA's
Airborne Science aircraft have diverse
capabilities ranging from the
high-flying Er-r2 and the unmanned
long-range Global Hawk to more
traditional aircraft like the B-200 King
Air, a C-28, a P3V
and the DC-8 flying laboratory.
The aircraft are based at four NASA centers
with six of the unique aircraft based at
NASA Dryden's facilities at Edwards and
Palmdale.
