NASA's DISCOVER-AQ air quality field campaign takes to the skies over the Baltimore-Washington traffic corridor and northeast Maryland on Tuesday, July 5, from 5:30 am to 1:30 pm local time.
The flight is part of a mission to enhance the capability of satellites to measure ground-level air quality from space.
DISCOVER-AQ, (hardly a candidate for acronym of the year) stands for Deriving Information on Surface Conditions from Column and Vertically Resolved Observations Relevant to Air Quality, and is a NASA Earth Science Division research effort conducted in collaboration with the Maryland Department of the Environment, the US Environmental Protection Agency and several universities.
NASA's P-3B research aircraft, a 117-foot, four-engine turboprop, will fly as low as 1,000 feet over the study region. It will also make spiral ascents and descents over six locations where air-quality measurements are being made from ground stations.
Approximately 14 DISCOVER-AQ flights are planned through July when weather conditions are appropriate. NASA will announce each flight by 5 pm the day before the aircraft is scheduled to fly.
