For many NASA scientists, the flight aboard a completely equipped Douglas DC-8 aircraft offered unique glimpses of Earth: the Moai on Easter Island, Central Park in New York and Mount Vesuvius in Italy.
On Wednesday, among the same scientists who worked on this “flying laboratory” watched because it made one final flight over the Ames Research Center in Mountain View before it was decommissioned.
Reem Hannun, an atmospheric sciences scientist, attended the flyover along with her two children before dropping them off at college. As the twins played across the trees and commented on the massive plane that flew low to the bottom so that they could see it, she remembered how she began at NASA doing science within the plane and Read field measurements.
“It's just cool to see all these different measurements of atmospheric composition and it's a great community to be part of and you have the opportunity to travel the world and do science,” Hannun said.
The aircraft, owned by NASA, was certainly one of seven DC-8 aircraft still in service internationally. Thomas Matthews, the aircraft's chief operating engineer and principal mission manager, said NASA had used the aircraft for 37 years, however the aging aircraft needed to get replaced since it was becoming increasingly difficult to take care of. A brand new Boeing 777 will replace the DC-8 that’s being retired at Idaho State University's Aircraft Maintenance School in Pocatello.
Jhony Zavaleta, a project manager with the Earth Science Project Office, said he doesn't normally must fly the plane for missions, but he has taken every opportunity he can to climb aboard. He recalled certainly one of the numerous flights the plane revamped Antarctica between 2011 and 2017, calling it the “most amazing landscape you could see.”
The flight was a part of Operation IceBridge, the goal of which was to proceed collecting data on polar ice while NASA modified satellites. Zavaleta remembered seeing mountain ranges and glaciers so far as the attention could see.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful and so inhospitable at the same time,” said Zavaleta. “It was pretty beautiful, it was like being on another planet.”
The plane was originally a passenger aircraft operated by Alitalia, Italy's former national airline, and adjusted hands to Braniff International Airways before ultimately being sold to NASA in 1986 to be used on the Ames Research Center, Matthews said.
The moment he landed low over America's largest city was a culmination of all of the coordination needed to “carry out a low-level flight in some of the busiest places you can fly, and do it safely,” he said he.
“It was also an amazing thing to achieve with stunning scenery, with all the towers and views of Central Park,” Matthews said.
The aircraft underwent quite a few modifications for the research, Matthews said, with additional connectors and racks for scientific components, latest landing gear and engines.
These changes allowed the aircraft to gather air quality data and climate surveys. Chris Scofield, a former research scientist on the DC-8, wiped away tears as she watched the plane take off for the last time, recalling some of the significant uses of the info collected by the plane.
Before she was placed on the plane, Scofield said, the research was used to locate and measure a hole within the Earth's ozone layer within the Eighties to search out out where chlorofluorocarbons – chemicals commonly used as refrigerants – Destroyed ozone within the atmosphere. This discovery led to the adoption of a worldwide agreement in 1987 that called for phasing out the usage of these chemicals and allowing the outlet to be repaired naturally.
“The DC-8 was actually another part of the picture, so you could see, yes, it was really happening the way we imagine it chemically,” Scofield said.
In addition to being a primary research vessel, the aircraft was a fondly remembered workplace for a lot of NASA employees. Jim Podolske, a research scientist who has flown the DC-8 for 21 years, praised the interactive collaborative effort of about 40 scientists who reported interesting observations and made decisions together in real time.
“They've done some pretty amazing scientific work, so I think the Triple-7 has big shoes to fill,” Zavaleta said, mentioning the brand new aircraft that can replace the DC-8. “Over that time, it kind of became the perfect platform for people to do research.”
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