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DC-8 Airborne Laboratory arrival at NASA Dryden DC-8 Airborne Laboratory arrival at NASA Dryden

Historical: Do not use as current Dryden information

Photo Number: EC97-44358-002
Photo Date: December 29, 1997

Formats: 513x480 JPEG Image (78 KBytes)
1096x1024 JPEG Image (381 KBytes)
2997x2800 JPEG Image (3,493 KBytes)

Photo
Description:
NASA's DC-8 Airborne Science platform landed at Edwards Air Force Base, California, to join the fleet of aircraft at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center. The white aircraft with a blue stripe running horizontally from the nose to the tail is shown with its main landing gear just above the runway. The former airliner is a "dash-72" model and has a range of 5,400 miles. The craft can stay airborne for 12 hours and has an operational speed range between 300 and 500 knots. The research flights are made at between 500 and 41,000 feet. The aircraft can carry up to 30,000 lbs of research/science payload equipment installed in 15 mission-definable spaces.

Project
Description:
NASA used a DC-8 aircraft as a flying science laboratory. The platform aircraft, was based at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., collected data for many experiments in support of scientific projects serving the world scientific community. Included in this community were NASA, federal, state, academic and foreign investigators. Data gathered by the DC-8 at flight altitude and by remote sensing has been used for scientific studies in archeology, ecology, geography, hydrology, meteorology, oceanography, volcanology, atmospheric chemistry, soil science and biology.

NASA Photo by: Tony Landis

Keywords: DC-8; science platform; oceanography; meteorology; soil science; archeology; ecology; geography; hydrology; volcanology; atmospheric chemistry; and biology; Edwards Air Force Base; Dryden Flight Research Center



Last Modified: February 6, 2002
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