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Altus II high altitude science aircraft decending toward U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai, Hawaii |
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| Photo Number: |
EC99-45006-1 |
| Photo Date: |
May 1999 |
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| Formats: |
524x480 JPEG Image (96 KBytes)
1119x1024 JPEG Image (471 KBytes)
3000x2745 JPEG Image (3,547 KBytes)
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Photo
Description: |
Altus II descending from a flight over Kauai, Hawaii. |
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Project
Description: |
The Altus II was flown as a performance and propulsion testbed for future high-altitude science platform aircraft under NASA’s Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program at the Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif. The rear-engined Altus II and its sister ship, the Altus I, were built by General Atomics/Aeronautical Systems, Inc., of San Diego, Calif. They are designed for high-altitude, long-duration scientific sampling missions, and are powered by turbocharged piston engines. The Altus I, built for the Naval Postgraduate School, reached over 43,500 feet with a single-stage turbocharger feeding its four-cylinder Rotax engine in 1997, while the Altus II, incorporating a two-stage turbocharger built by Thermo-Mechanical Systems, reached and sustained an altitudeof 55,000 feet for four hours in 1999. A pilot in a control station on the ground flies the craft by radio signals, using visual cues from a video
camera in the nose of the Altus and information from the craft’s air data system. |
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| NASA Photo by: |
Sandia Labs/Dick Jones |
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| Keywords: |
Altus II; ERAST; Kauai; General Atomics; Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology |
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