Tuesday, July 21, 2026

NASA Earth Science Flights to Begin, With JPL Instruments Aboard First Mission

NASA’s 777 aircraft is gearing up to start science flights. Structural modifications – like enlarged cabin windows and instrument portals – have transformed the former passenger plane into a flying laboratory. It’s seen here at Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, in April 2026. Credit: NASA/Ryan Hill

NASA’s newest class of suborbital Earth science missions is preparing for flight, with the first mission set to study dangerous wildfire-generated storm clouds using aircraft-mounted instruments, including infrared wildfire trackers developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.

The first of six new venture-class missions will take to the skies this summer to study pyrocumulonimbus storms, towering “fire clouds” that can form when extreme wildfires burn hot enough to generate their own thunderstorms, according to a July 20 NASA report. The broader group of missions will examine phenomena including landslides in Alaska, air quality in Atlanta, fire clouds in the West, Arctic change and agricultural emissions.

The six projects will involve hundreds of scientists and pilots from NASA, the U.S. Navy, universities and other institutions over the next several years. The missions are suborbital, meaning they will rely heavily on sensors mounted on aircraft rather than instruments placed in orbit. NASA said airborne remote sensing can help bridge the gap between ground-based instruments and satellites, providing data for computer models used by weather forecasters, city planners and others.

The first project, the Injected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment, or INSPYRE, is led by the Naval Research Laboratory. From mission headquarters in Colorado, the team will study one of the least understood forms of severe weather on Earth: wildfire-generated storms that can produce lightning, create blind spots for aviators above and spark new fires below. Measuring and mapping the storms as they develop in real time will help scientists forecast them in the future, NASA said.

Several aircraft, including NASA’s high-altitude ER-2 flying out of Montana, will carry instruments over wildfire-generated storm systems. Among the instruments will be two infrared wildfire trackers developed at JPL in Southern California and flown as part of NASA’s FireSense program. The role gives JPL a defined part in the first mission, while the overall INSPYRE effort is led by the Naval Research Laboratory.

Another mission, FarmFlux, will focus on agricultural emissions, an area NASA described as important and understudied in Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The mission, which kicks off this year, will use more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms from the Midwest to California’s Central Valley. The emissions affect human health, global climate and stratospheric ozone. FarmFlux is led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, with Colorado State University and Boston University.

The Hemispheric Airborne Measurements of Air Quality mission, known as HAMAQ, will study air quality in Atlanta and Mexico City, where pollution concerns differ because of weather and terrain. The mission will also test how satellite information can help forecasting and mitigation efforts. The team will use NASA’s P-3B aircraft near the surface to directly measure fine particles and gaseous pollutants, while NASA’s recently acquired 777 science jet will fly higher, mapping pollution with remote sensors. NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is leading the mission.

NASA’s 777 aircraft has been modified for science flights, with structural changes including enlarged cabin windows and instrument portals that have transformed the former passenger plane into a flying laboratory. NASA said the aircraft was seen at Langley Research Center in April 2026 as it prepared to begin science flights.

Other missions will examine changes in the Arctic and nearby ecosystems. NASA said the Arctic is warming at least twice as fast as the rest of Earth and that data collected now can help guide communities on the front lines of change.

Snow4Flow, led by the University of Arizona, will measure and model how far and fast glaciers are retreating across Alaska, the Yukon, Arctic Canada, Greenland and Svalbard, Norway. Researchers will use a modernized World War II-era aircraft equipped with a scanning laser altimeter and two custom radars, combining those observations with satellite data and models of snowfall and glacier flow. The mission seeks to improve understanding of what those glaciers look like beneath the surface now and the processes that will drive future changes.

The Frontlines of Rapidly Transforming Ecosystems project, or FORTE, will study how rivers, lagoons and estuaries across Alaska’s North Slope interact with the Arctic Ocean as thawing permafrost affects the movement of carbon and sediment. NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and the City College of New York are leading the project, which will combine measurements from satellites, planes, research vessels, drones and underwater autonomous systems to track microscopic marine life, water flow and chemistry. NASA said the team will collaborate with local and tribal communities to sustain observations and address local decision-making needs.

JPL scientists are also closely tied to landslide research described in the Landslide Change Characterization Experiment, or LACCE. NASA said that after the Mud Creek landslide collapsed in May 2017 along the Big Sur coast and damaged Highway 1, scientists at NASA JPL wanted to know how swings in precipitation had played a role. JPL studies how water infiltrates and destabilizes hillslopes around the world, and LACCE will combine airborne synthetic aperture radar with land-based sensors to track how slopes in California are responding to more intense cycles of drought and downpours.

The landslide project will also examine emerging hazards in Alaska, where rapidly retreating glaciers are accelerating slope movements that NASA said could create mega-tsunamis. The broader Earth Venture Suborbital program was established after a 2007 recommendation by the National Research Council. Since then, NASA said, teams have used the program to study phenomena including blizzards, coral reefs and ocean whirlpools.