Studying Thunderstorms with NASA’s ER-2 Aircraft

NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California collaborated with University of Bergen, Norway to create the ALOFT project, Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s eye simulator and Terrestrial gamma ray flashes. The team included from scientists and investigators from the University of Bergen, Norway, and pilots, engineers, and technicians from NASA who investigated lightning glows and terrestrial gamma ray flashes. Flying just above the height of thunderclouds over the Floridian and Caribbean coastlines, NASA’s ER-2 aircraft collect more accurate data that can advance the study of high-energy radiation emissions from thunderstorms.

What is said in the film

(wind blowing) (thunder rumbling) - Airborne science, we study all kinds of different weather. Lightning is obviously a very big part. (dramatic music) - First name, Alistair, last name Ma. Engineering technician slash crew chief. It's very exciting to be working with the ER2.

My role is to design a flight campaign that can put us over thunderstorms as much as possible. (dramatic music) - We gotta get as much as a nitrogen out of this system as possible. - We are hunting for gamma rays from thunderstorms known as terrestrial gamma ray flashes. - So doing this research helps us learn more about how lightning forms and reacts with mother nature. - We are hunting for gamma rays from thunderstorms.

These gamma rays can come in two forms. One are low energy, long live things called glows, sort of enhancements in the background radiation. And then within those glows, you have things known as terrestrial gamma ray flashes or TGFs. And they're very powerful emissions of radiation from thunderstorms. - In order to go and observe these TGFs, we are using the ER2 aircraft, which is a high altitude, high endurance aircraft.

So it gives us the ability to fly a distance away and stay over those targets of opportunity for a good amount of time so that we can make those observations. - One of the first things we're gonna do when we come into work is let the instrument teams get about an hour. They're gonna go through their instruments, make sure everything's working correctly, do their pre-flights along with us doing our pre-flight. - So I-storm is an instrument to detect gamma rays from these energetic events from thunderstorms. What we hope to find is to understand the energy of these photons and that gives us insight into the energetic processes that happen in these gamma ray flashes.

• Naturally when the dialing pressure, the head will go up and we'll pull this down or he'll pull it down while he's in the aircraft and it'll bring his head down. That way you can see in the cockpit. First of all, we pre-flight their suits and make sure everything's good. All the leak rates are within tolerance. And then when the pilots come down, we'll suit them up.

And then he has to pre-breathe 100% oxygen. We gotta get as much as the nitrogen out of his system as possible. - That's why it's pre-breathing, 100% oxygen for an hour. They can develop the bands if they go up too fast. Bubbles will fall in your veins.

We're going to tow the aircraft outside. We obviously need fuel, which we bring our own fuel tanks for. We'll fuel it and then after we've fueled it, we'll take it over to the launch spot. After that we're going to get the aircraft ready to go, get the pilot inside. In addition we're collecting validation data for NASA lightning satellites, the lightning imaging sensor on the space station as well as the geostationary lightning mapper up on geostationary orbit.

With the success of being able to observe TGFs on this mission, it'll be world known and the research will help people globally.

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