NASA's Earth Venture Suborbital program is gearing up for a new phase, with six projects set to mobilize hundreds of scientists and pilots from NASA, the U.S. Navy, universities, and other institutions over the next several years. These missions, designed to be nimble and high impact, will deliver science that benefits communities in the United States and beyond, from the Arctic fringes to farm country. While the investigations range across topics, a defining feature of suborbital missions is the use of sensors mounted on aircraft, serving as a bridge between ground-based instruments and satellites.
One of the most intriguing projects is the Injected Smoke and PYRocumulonimbus Experiment (INSPYRE), led by the Naval Research Laboratory. From mission headquarters in Colorado, the team will chase one of the least understood forms of severe weather on Earth: towering "fire clouds" generated when extreme wildfires burn hot enough to brew their own thunderstorms. These unique storms can create blind spots for aviators and spark new blazes below. Measuring and mapping the dangerous storms as they develop in real-time will help scientists forecast them in the future. Several aircraft, including NASA's high-altitude ER-2, will carry a large suite of instruments over wildfire-generated storm systems, including two state-of-the-art infrared wildfire trackers developed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
Another fascinating project is the FarmFlux mission, which will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates, and other pollutants rising from agricultural lands and animal farms stretching from the Midwest to California's Central Valley. These emissions affect human health, global climate, and stratospheric ozone. The mission is led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, along with Colorado State University, and Boston University.
The Hemispheric Airborne Measurements of Air Quality (HAMAQ) mission will investigate areas of poor air in Atlanta and Mexico City, two North American cities with air quality concerns. The causes differ, with weather and terrain playing a role. To explore these differences, the team will deploy two aircraft at different altitudes: NASA's P-3B will fly close to the surface, directly measuring fine particle and gaseous pollutants, while the recently acquired 777 science jet will soar high above, mapping pollution with remote sensors. NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is leading the mission.
The Snow4Flow campaign, led by the University of Arizona, seeks to measure and model how far and fast glaciers are retreating in the far north. Traversing remote icescapes across Alaska, the Yukon, Arctic Canada, Greenland, and Svalbard, Norway, they'll sound both the near-surface and frozen depths of hundreds of glaciers while flying over in a modernized WWII-era aircraft outfitted with a scanning laser altimeter and two custom radars. Their observations, combined with satellite data and advanced models of snowfall and glacier flow, will advance our understanding of how glaciers behave in different regions of the Arctic.
As permafrost thaws, rivers on the doorstep of the Arctic become conveyor belts of carbon and sediment. NASA Goddard, and the City College of New York lead a multidisciplinary team studying how rivers, lagoons, and estuaries across Alaska's North Slope interact with the Arctic Ocean. The project, called Frontlines of Rapidly Transforming Ecosystems (FORTE), will combine optical and radar measurements from satellites, planes, high-tech research vessels, drones, and underwater autonomous systems to track microscopic marine life, water flow, and chemistry. The team will collaborate with local and tribal communities to sustain observations over time and apply NASA assets to address emerging local needs and decision-making priorities.
When a slow-moving landslide in California suddenly collapsed and buried a section of coastal highway in 2017, scientists at NASA JPL wanted to know how precipitation swings played a role. The Landslide Change Characterization Experiment (LACCE) project will combine airborne synthetic aperture radar with land-based sensors to track how slopes in California are responding to a world of intensifying droughts and downpours. The project also takes aim at emerging landslide hazards in Alaska, where rapidly retreating glaciers are accelerating slope movements that have the potential to create mega-tsunamis.
NASA's Earth Venture Suborbital program, established following a recommendation by the National Research Council in 2007, has studied phenomena including blizzards, coral reefs, and ocean whirlpools. But what makes this new phase particularly fascinating is the focus on real-time data collection and its potential to improve forecasting and mitigation efforts. From wildfires to agricultural emissions, from air quality to glaciers, these missions are poised to deliver insights that will benefit communities and advance our understanding of the complex systems that shape our planet.
