NASA pilots flew a high-altitude science aircraft directly into thunderstorms and recorded incredible data on gamma-ray flashes.
Thunderstorms can create powerful updrafts and downdrafts of wind that speed up air and water to high speeds. As ice crystals collide in these swirling air currents, electrons are stripped away from them, generating the electrical fields that produce lightning. Under certain conditions, these free electrons can even create flashes of gamma rays, the shortest and most energetic waves within the electromagnetic spectrum. Thunderstorms can emit two several types of gamma-ray radiation: Short gamma-ray flashes and longer gamma-ray glows that may last from minutes to hours.
To raised understand these phenomena, a world group of scientists flew NASA’s high-altitude ER-2 (Earth Resources 2) aircraft as close as safely possible to thunderclouds that stretched as high as 10 miles (18 kilometers), in keeping with a statement from NASA’s Marshall Flight Center in Alabama. Doing so allowed the team to assemble “essentially the most detailed airborne evaluation of gamma rays and thunderclouds ever recorded,” in keeping with the statement.
Related: Gamma rays: Every thing you should learn about these powerful packets of energy
Researchers from the University of Bergen in Norway, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and three different NASA centers participated within the study, often called Airborne Lightning Observatory for Fly’s Eye GLM Simulator and Terrestrial gamma-ray flashes, or ALOFT. The info this system has gathered could “help scientists see when storms are strengthening and supply extra lead time of data to maintain the general public secure from the specter of lightning,” NASA’s Timothy Lang said within the statement.
The aircraft flew out of Tampa, Florida and conducted over 60 hours of observations. A singular gamma-ray detector developed on the University of Bergen enabled researchers to gather data in real-time, enabling them to direct pilots towards thunderclouds that actively glowed with gamma-ray radiation.
One other instrument aboard the aircraft, the Fly’s Eye GLM Simulator (FEGS), captured data within the near-infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum which might be emitted by lightning yet are invisible to current satellites. “These smaller, less dense flashes are often called precursors of when storms are turning severe,” Lang said.
The high-altitude NASA ER-2 aircraft utilized in the study is one among only two within the agency’s possession. The aircraft can fly extremely high within the sky, above 99% of Earth’s atmosphere. They were based on the Lockheed U-2 spy plane and were acquired by NASA in 1981 and 1989, respectively.
NASA’s two ER-2 aircraft have flown greater than 4,500 missions up to now, and one among them set an extreme altitude record for its weight class in 1998 when it got 68,700 feet (21 kilometers) above Earth, in keeping with a NASA fact sheet. (For perspective: Business airliners generally cruise at altitudes around 35,000 feet, or 11,000 m.)
NASA’s ER-2 aircraft have been used to conduct studies on latest satellite sensors, global warming and ozone levels, atmospheric phenomena and even snowfall.