NASA’s C-20A aircraft operated over several countries this summer, completing more than 150 hours of scientific flights in support of geoscience research over a two-month period and overcoming several challenges along the way.
The C-20A research aircraft, based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research in Edwards, California, has been modified to support the uninhabited aircraft’s Synthetic Aperture Radar and SAR fusion camera. The instruments, built and operated by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, collect data and images of the Earth’s surface for use in understanding global ecosystems, natural hazards and land surface changes.
From May 20 to July 24, the team crossed the Atlantic and deployed to multiple sites in Africa and Germany for two campaigns. These included the Africa Synthetic Aperture Radar (AfriSAR) mission in collaboration with the European Space Agency and the Germany Bistatic Experiment in collaboration with the German Aerospace Center.
For the AfriSAR mission, researchers collected data from the air over African forests, savannas and wetlands to use in studies of Earth’s ecosystems. The data sets collected over Germany are used to develop elevation maps of the land surface.
The flight team was able to successfully complete its missions despite several challenges, including mechanical and technical issues with the aircraft. Despite the challenges, the team quickly resolved the issues and worked to minimize impacts to the science schedule and objectives.
“We prepared for the unexpected and expected to be unprepared,” said Shawn Kern, NASA Armstrong’s director of safety and mission assurance and a C-20A pilot. “With that mindset, we were willing to adapt and change plans as needed and met challenges with a lot of resilience, a lot of innovation and a lot of improvised solutions to get things done despite some significant obstacles.”
The team included aircraft mechanics, avionics technicians, quality assurance representatives, science leaders and instrument operators, operations engineers, mission managers and pilots. They were also supported by project management, safety, logistics, meteorological and maintenance personnel at NASA Armstrong.
“It was truly teamwork, improvisation and creativity that solved these unexpected challenges and made the mission a success,” Kern added.
To understand climate on a global scale, it is necessary to collect scientific data in unique regions and under unique conditions. The data generated from these two aerial campaigns can be used to calibrate and validate data from future satellite-based missions such as NISAR (NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar).
“Airborne campaigns like this are essential to the development of space-based technology. Often, measurements and science simply cannot be obtained using satellites alone and therefore require airborne data collection,” said Gerald Bawden, program scientist for Earth’s surface and interior studies at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “This mission advanced both areas and was made possible by this team.”
