A Low-Flying NASA Plane Has Been Seen Flying Over CT. It’s Responsible for Sniffing the Air.

Jul. 27—A "low and slow" flying plane caught the attention of some residents in Connecticut and New York this week and those with good enough vision might have noticed the NASA logo.

The aircraft was the NASA DC-8 plane, considered "the world's largest flying chemistry laboratory," according to NASA.

The plane was flying at a cruising altitude before dropping to about 2,300 feet over New Jersey. It crisscrossed over New Jersey, New York City and Long Island for several hours before it entered Connecticut's airspace.

The flyover was part of the "Atmospheric Emissions and Reactions Observed from Megacities to Marine Areas" or AREOMMA project.

The project is sampling large urban areas for volatile organic compounds, a type of air pollution. It's also skimming over the ocean to sample the atmospheric chemistry of the sea. Over the next few months, AREOMMA will be flying over New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Toronto. Over a dozen universities and research institutes, including Yale's Gentner Lab, are involved.

For this mission, it's stuffed to the gills with chemical sensors for air pollution including aerosols, particles and volatile organic compounds. These compounds are produced by the burning of fossil fuels but are also released by personal care products.

According to AREOMMA's project site, in trial flights the plane's instruments were capable of detecting a distinct "chemical signature" from the cocktail of personal care products used in New York City. The plane is literally smelling the aroma of body washes, shampoos and perfumes mingling with cleaning products.

NASA believes that it is possible that these products could be responsible for up to 50% of volatile organic compound emissions in cities, according to the project website. These floating chemical compounds could react with other junk in the air, like gasoline exhaust, to produce other pollutants, like ozone and aerosols.

The goals of all this sniffing is complex but it's an effort by NASA to take an inventory of air pollution from cities.

At the same time, NASA is also sampling the chemicals and aerosols emitted by the sea. The ocean releases lots of stuff into the atmosphere naturally. Understanding what that stuff is, and how it changes near cities, and under climate change, is extremely important for air quality, weather and climate.

So between now and the end of August if you see a low-flying jet with a NASA logo near New York City, Long Island Sound or Connecticut don't worry, it's just sniffing the air.

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