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Did you see it? NASA uses retired spy plane to survey, improve snow forecasts

If you looked up early Wednesday afternoon and noticed a unusual looking white aircraft high up against the clear Carolina blue skies, you caught a rare glimpse of a spy plane turned science platform for NASA. It returned to Pope Airfield shortly after 1 p.m. on Wednesday passing over Rocky Mount, Wendell and Lillington en route, and catching the eye of WRAL viewers who asked if they'd just seen a U-2.

Posted Updated
NASA operates two Airborne Science ER-2 aircraft for a wide variety of environmental science, atmospheric sampling, and satellite data verification missions. (NASA / Carla Thomas)
By
Tony Rice
, NASA Ambassador
Update: The NASA ER-2 is scheduled to depart Pope Army Airfield at 5:00pm on Saturday January 29 for an eight hour flight studying the blizzard stretching from New Jersey to New England. The planned flight path takes it from Fayetteville, over the Triangle and on to Rocky Mount on its way to the northeast .  You can track the progress of N809NA online.

If you looked up early Wednesday afternoon and noticed an unusual looking white aircraft high up against the clear Carolina blue skies, you caught a rare glimpse of a spy plane-turned science platform for NASA.

N809NA took off from Pope Army Airfield in Fayetteville before sunrise Wednesday morning and turned right over Raleigh-Durham International Airport before heading north for a seven-hour flight to the skies over southern Ontario. Scientists were studying cloud physics in a system expected to bring snow to Pennsylvania.

It returned to Pope Airfield shortly after 1 p.m. on Wednesday, passing over Rocky Mount, Wendell and Lillington en route, and catching the eye of WRAL viewers who asked if they'd just seen a U-2.

NASA ER2 flies over Rocky Mount Photo: Sidney Perry

NASA operates a pair of these Lockheed ER-2 aircraft, a modified version of the high-flying U-2 reconnaissance planes that flew spy missions during the Cold War.

Each serves as a flying laboratory in the Airborne Science Program. Since 1971, NASA's ER-2's and the U-2's that preceded them have flown more than 4,500 missions gathering scientific data. They are also developing new electronic sensors as well as calibrating weather and climate research satellites.

Wednesday's flight was part of NASA's Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS). Since February of 2020, flights have been conducted from the Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore spanning from Savannah, Ga., across the Carolinas to the Ohio Valley and across New England states, focusing on the clouds that produce snow.

Data gathered by these planes will help meteorologists improve snowfall predictions by providing a better understanding of how snowbands form, are organized, and evolve over time.

How it works

instruments aboard NASA's ER-2 and P-3 airborne science aircaft (NASA Earth Science Project Office)

Advanced radar, lidar, and microwave radiometer remote sensing instruments are onboard the ER-2 while the P-3 includes sensors which measure the water content and particle size in clouds, studying icing and the airflow around precipitation. Scientists can also release radiosondes similar to those used to study hurricanes.

IMPACTS uses coordinated remote-sensing ER-2 and in-situ sampling P-3 flights to study the structure, dynamics, and microphysical characteristics of banded structures in winter storms. Merging ER-2 multi-sensor data (CPL, HIWRAP, and AMPR, shown above) enables advanced retrievals of microphysical properties of snowbands. (NASA Earth Science Project Office)

An ER-2 plane looks down on about 95% of the atmosphere flying at an altitude of up to 70,000 feet while its sister ship, a P-3 Orion originally designed as a sub hunter for the U.S. Navy, flies through the cloud layer at about one-third that altitude. These aircraft, working with ground observations and weather satellites like the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and GOES satellites, study the atmosphere from top to bottom in conditions that can deliver snow.

A similar stacked approach has been used by NASA atmospheric research scientists for many years. We saw this in action several years ago in western North Carolina. Instruments matched those onboard the recently launched GPM satellite.

According to plans just published by the IMPACTS project, the ER-2 aircraft will not be flying Thursday or Friday but the high flying plan could be seen in our skies again by the weekend.

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