NASA begins science flights with robotic jet

One of NASA's latest research jets rose high above the Pacific Ocean Tuesday at a 24-hour mission to study Earth's atmosphere.

Its pilot was seated in a chair in a room windows of the Mojave Desert, monitor autonomous flight of the Global Hawk over a wide range of computer screens.

Global Hawk was designed to perform high-altitude, long endurance reconnaissance and intelligence missions for the Air Force, which has surrendered to NASA three versions built in the development process.

This month, NASA has begun to make a work for the first time by air over a large area in the Pacific to demonstrate the scientific usefulness unmanned aircraft.

"It has never been used by a civilian agency, and it has never been used for Earth science," said David W. Fahey, a research physicist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Distinguished by its bulbous, whale-shaped nose, top-mounted motor and V-tail, Global Hawk is 44 feet (13.4 meters) long and its wings span 116 feet (35.3 meters) - almost wingspan of the past Boeing 737th

Capable of transporting more than 1,000 pounds (450 kg) of science instruments, a Global Hawk can operate at altitudes up to 65,000 feet (19,810 meters) and stay up for 30 hours, while flying a distance of more than 12600 miles ( 20.275 km).

This will allow Global Hawk to test remote regions of the atmosphere, such as the equatorial regions of the oceans and the Arctic and Antarctic, Fahey said.

"Given its scope and duration, you can be away from these places and effectively drive this platform to make this kind of samples we are interested in," he said.

The Global Hawk is actually a hybrid between a satellite and an aircraft, said Paul Newman, senior scientist at NASA's atmosphere, Chemistry and Dynamics Branch at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

"This plan naturally flies in the stratosphere, so it is a perfect platform for ozone depletion science," he said.

In autumn, a Global Hawk is tested for its ability to contribute to hurricane research in the Atlantic.

Acquisition of the Global Hawks marks the latest conversion of military technology to civilian use by NASA.

The European Space Agency, for example, flying a converted high-altitude U-2 spy plane has been renamed ER-2, and a Predator B unmanned aircraft that have been Native American name Khan. In the 1990s, NASA spent two Air Force SR-71 Blackbird spy planes for high-speed, high altitude research.

One of NASA's immediate goal is to expand the envelope for the Global Hawks, Newman said.

"The military typically operates at a constant altitude. They turn their instruments when it comes to an end, and they turn them off when leaving a target," Newman said.

Scientists, however, will activate their instruments on the ground and extinguish them only when the aircraft is back on earth to acquire a "vertical profile of information," he said.

Various problems prevent the moment.

Also for now the Federal Aviation Administration gives Global Hawk to operate only over oceans, while the safety of unmanned aircraft in national airspace has been studied.

The Global Hawk deviations Edwards Tuesday was expected to fly north off the Pacific coast of North America, turn west along the Aleutian Islands and then south.

During the Hawaiian Islands, craft was to turn east and fly under the orbital path of a cluster of earth-observation satellites known as A-Train.

This was to allow actual sampling of particles in the atmosphere, the satellites measure remotely from space. An instrument aboard the plane is a laser identical to the one in orbit.

"Then we can prove that these satellites are working properly," Newman said.

The first flight of the Global Hawk Pacific Campaign took place April 7 and lasted 14 hours. Three more flights are planned.