FORKS — A “flying laboratory” testing components destined to become part of a satellite measuring carbon dioxide in the planet’s air will dip over Quillayute Airport today.
People in the Forks area may see the white and blue DC-8, a massive jet with a wing span of 150 feet that was an airliner before NASA acquired it, descending in a spiral over the Quillayute Airport at about 1:45 p.m.
It won’t land. It will come down to about 200 feet above the runway and then pull up and away, heading north, said Bill Brockett, a research pilot with NASA at Edwards Air Force Base in Palmdale, Calif., on Saturday.
Others on the North Olympic Peninsula aren’t likely to see anything remarkable, he said, since he and the other pilot of the four-engine jet will be flying high, like any airliner.
The 26 people onboard are flying from Edwards Air Force Base to test five remote sensing laser-based instruments over the snow and ice fields in the Cascades and the Olympics, Brockett said.
The instruments were developed to measure CO2 in the planet’s air, which isn’t now done from satellites, Brockett said.
“It’s like a competition to see which one can be perfected and do the best job,” Brockett said.
“Some will probably fly; some will be eliminated.”
The components measure carbon dioxide in the air by sending out light and measuring the differences in the light reflected back to pinpoint the chemicals in the air, Brockett said.
Today’s test is to see how snow and ice fields reflect back the light.
The dip over Quillayute Airport is to get a “reality check” by pulling in air samples in real time at the surface and comparing the measurements to the results from remote reading instruments.
This allows researchers to calibrate the instruments.
Originally, researchers planned to test the components over glacier fields in the panhandle of Alaska and southeast of Anchorage, but bad weather squelched that idea, and so they are flying over Washington state instead.
Once the design is completed, a C02 sensor will be installed in a satellite to be launched around 2018 or 2020, Brockett said.
NASA calls the program by the acronym ASCENDS, which means Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions Over Nights, Days and Seasons.
It’s intended to “provide improved ability to predict/model long-term changes in the climate cycle based both on the understanding of the natural processes driving the variability of natural carbon sources and sinks, and on the transport of carbon through the atmosphere,” NASA says on the website, http://decadal.gsfc.nasa.gov/ascends.html.
