NASA Aircraft to Make Low-Altitude Research Flights Over Colorado

A NASA Dynamic Aviation A200 aircraft will conduct low-flying research flights over farmland near Greeley, Colorado, beginning Thursday, Oct. 1 through Tuesday, Oct. 20, as part of the FarmFlux mission. These flights will measure gaseous and particulate emissions from animal feeding operations.

Agricultural emissions represent an important and understudied part of Earth’s land and atmosphere systems. The FarmFlux mission will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms and the interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission is jointly led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland; Colorado State University; and Boston University.

The Colorado deployment is the first series of flights for the FarmFlux mission. Additional low-altitude research flights are scheduled over farmland in Amarillo, Texas, from late October to early November. For the March to July 2027 growing season, research flights with a NASA P-3 Orion aircraft are scheduled in the Midwest and California’s Central Valley with a focus on croplands.

For more information about the FarmFlux mission, visit:

https://espo.nasa.gov/farmflux

By Sharon Teitelbaum

NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley