Month: January 2025

In Their Own Words: NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program as Captured by Atticus Cummings

Hi, my name is Atticus and I’m a mechanical engineering student at UCLA and hobbyist photographer. The summer of 2024, I participated in NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), an 8-week internship offering rising seniors hands-on experience as airborne scientists in training.

The program had two phases: data collection and analysis. In the first phase, we flew over the East Coast aboard NASA’s research aircraft, tracking trace gas concentrations and mapping ground topography with LIDAR, and conducting fieldwork at a saltmarsh along Virginia’s Eastern Shore. After the flights and fieldwork, we developed and completed individual research projects using the data we collected and NASA’s many publicly available datasets.
A large white aircraft sits in a hangar with a group of NASA interns posing in front of it. As a mechanical engineer with little prior experience in Earth science, this was a tremendous learning opportunity and a welcomed crash course in climate change research. I learned all about the various types of scientific instrumentation, data systems, and analysis techniques, and had the chance to apply them firsthand. With lectures and interactions with  faculty mentors and graduate student advisors, we received ample support to carry out our research projects while making meaningful contributions to Earth science and lasting friendships.  

Between collecting air samples aboard NASA research aircraft, trudging knee deep in the mud to collect salt marsh spectra, and mapping kelp canopy from satellite imagery, here’s a glimpse of SARP 2024 through my lens.

Airborne Science at Wallops Flight Facility

The internship began at the Wallops Flight Facility on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. We spent the first two weeks in lectures on NASA’s active research areas, attending flight and safety briefings, touring facilities, and flying aboard NASA research aircraft. For SARP 2024, we each had the opportunity to fly two or three missions on the Lockheed Orion P3 and Beechcraft King-Air B200. The P3 and B200 were both equipped with dozens of instruments that measured everything from trace gas and black carbon concentrations to ground topography and vegetation using an advanced LIDAR system. As we flew over city centers, busy highways, power plants, ocean and swamp, we tracked spikes and dips in gas concentrations and tried to pinpoint the sources and sinks.

A large white aircraft sits inside a hangar. A forklift sits to the right most edge of the image.
Originally used to search for submarines during the Cold War, this Lockheed Orion P3 has conducted airborne science for NASA since 1991! It has been to all seven continents many times and had just returned from a field campaign in Greenland.

 

 

 

 

 

Two scientific instruments which look like copper pipes, sit on the outside of a white wing to an aircraft.
Between flights, the scientists and engineers were always happy to answer questions about their airborne instruments and previous air campaigns. These two instruments use lasers and optical spectroscopy to image aerosols and measure their sizes and shapes.
A large white aircraft with NASA logos upon it flies through the air.
Here’s the P3 taking off on its first SARP mission: a 3-hour flight measuring air pollution over Washington D.C. and Baltimore.
A computer screen with graphs of data moving sharply up and down is watched while aboard an aircraft.
One of the trends that particularly stood out to me was how isoprene concentrations increased throughout the day. Released by plants through photosynthesis, isoprene levels would peak midday with the light intensity. I was also surprised to see how methane levels rose drastically over marshes and certain areas in the Chesapeake Bay.
Two images of interns and NASA mentors looking at data displays while aboard an aircraft.
From the ground, we received live instrument data from the aircraft. While an airplane was collecting data, we communicated with the flight crew to discuss spikes in CO2, methane, and other trace gasses.
The interior of a scientific aircraft. Multiple screens and exposed cables are visible throughout.
The Lockheed Orion P3 fuselage was packed with a variety of instruments that we monitored throughout the flight.
A gray aircraft taxis on the runway.
The B200 was a much smaller aircraft and only seated seven, including the two pilots. While this aircraft had fewer instruments, it was equipped with a system to capture air samples, which would be later analyzed at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) by the Rowland-Blake lab.
A gray aircraft is entered by students.
Samarth climbing aboard the B200 before a long flight over Baltimore.
A pilot with sunglasses opens the engine compartment of a gray aircraft.
The pilots were extremely informative and happy to answer questions. I asked Pilot Angelo Cosentino a question about propeller pitch control, and he opened up the engine to show how the pitch is controlled by a hydraulic feedback loop tuned for optimal flying efficiency.

As we flew a thousand feet over power plants, factories and shipyards, we collected whole air samples upstream and downstream of the industrial sites to measure their emissions. This required careful coordination and timing as we might only be in the smokestack plume for only a second or two. These were some of the most exciting and rewarding moments of the flights.

A large industrial zone is viewed from the sky. Large domes and pipes are seen throughout.
Here’s an industrial plastics plant in Hopewell, VA.
A large industrial area beside a waterway is seen from above.
We also collected air samples over the smokestacks of the Chesterfield Power Station, a natural gas power plant in Chester, Virginia.
A large cargo ship is seen from above in the Chesapeake Bay.
On the final SARP flight, we flew through the exhaust plume of a cargo ship while spiraling over the outlet of the Chesapeake Bay. Spiraling is a maneuver we would use to get a vertical column of air samples. We would begin at an altitude of 10,000 feet, and make tight circles as we descended to just 500 feet in order to measure how trace gas concentrations varied with altitude.
Graphs of data on a computer screen aboard an aircraft.
Pictured on the left is Serita watching our flight trajectory and tracking real time trace gas measurements from NASA Goddard’s PICARO instrument. Pictured on the right is the Whole Air Sample (WAS) collection system aboard the B200. We operated a network of valves and tubes (called a manifold) to pump outside air into evacuated stainless steel canisters, which were later analyzed at University of California Irvine.
Air sample tubes sit stacked on top of each other in a large lab.
After SARP and courtesy of Dr. Tai-Yih Chen, I had the opportunity to tour the Rowland-Blake lab at UCI, where air samples collected with the WAS onboard the B200 aircraft were analyzed.  Each air sample was separated into more than 100 trace gases by gas chromatography, and detected by mass spectrometer detector (MSD), electron capture detector (ECD), and flame ionization detector (FID).  Hydrocarbon species concentration levels were typically reported to as low as the 3 pptv (parts per trillion by volume) detection limit, while several halocarbons were routinely reported with 10 ppqv (parts per quadrillion by volume) resolution.
NASA's Wallops Flight Facility seen from a gray aircraft.
A final view of WFF on the last B200 flight of SARP East!

Going into SARP, I had no idea about the role that the NASA Earth airborne science program played in climate change and pollution research. These flights shed light on a very important and unsung side of NASA, and were certainly a highlight of the internship.

Ground Truthing and Fieldwork

After the flights, we packed our bags and headed off to our group’s fieldwork site. As a member of the Oceans group, I went to the Virginia Coastal Reserve LTER (Long Term Ecological Reserve) on the Eastern shore of Virginia. Here we learned about the salt marshes and barrier islands and how they protect our environment against storm surge, create nurseries for marine life, naturally filter pollution from our oceans, and support Virginia’s oyster and clam fisheries.

An important aspect of remote sensing is ground truthing. Here we collect ground data to calibrate drone, aircraft or satellite data. In this case, we gathered spectral data of the different cover types in the salt marshes off the Eastern Shore of Virginia. These data could be used for exploratory research, or as a basis for classifying cover types from spectral remote sensing data sources. We began fieldwork at a nearby tidal salt marsh and used a multispectral drone to map out the area and measured the spectral signature of each cover type using an optical spectrometer.

Picturesque vista of boggy waterways near Virginia's Chesapeake Bay.
Here’s the salt marsh approaching low tide. Collecting the spectral data was a race against time as we only had a short period before the tide turned and our field site was back underwater.

First we laid a 100m transect line with 10 evenly-spaced quadrats, which served to standardize our data collection process. We measured the absorption spectra of each quadrat and took note of the constituents and the associated cover types.

A rectangle of PVC pipe with string running between it cutting it into quarters sits on a mound of dirt.
A quadrat consists of a one-by-one meter PVC square with nylon cord separating it into four subdivisions. This uniformity enabled greater consistency in our data-taking process.

The drone flight was only ten minutes and was programmed to scan the area taking multispectral images, which would be stitched together to form a large panoramic map.

A man operates a quadcopter drone while wearing long sleeve attire and a hat.
Here’s Kelby landing the multispectral drone after its flight.
Black and white landscapes from above visualized with colorizations of data.
Here’s a GIF of the multispectral drone imagery we took. Each image is taken with a different narrowband filter to capture a coarse spectral image of the entire region.
A woman looks down at a large metallic spectrometer.
After the drone flight, we began measuring the spectra of various cover types using a handheld spectrometer. Here’s Jasmine measuring the spectral reflectance of a marsh grass.
A group of muddy students pose together in a parking lot and smiles.
We were all very muddy by the end of the day.

Life at Christopher Newport University

 For the remainder of the internship, we stayed at Christopher Newport University (CNU) in Newport News, Virginia where we began work on our individual research projects.

Christopher Newport University walkways in red brick with many columns creating the exteriors of large brick buildings. A library with a massive staircase.
Our schedules at CNU were much more flexible. My typical day consisted of a morning oceans group meeting, an afternoon meeting with my graduate mentor and faculty advisor, a guest lecture or workshop, and many hours split between the CNU library and a nearby café.
A student sits in a cafe working at a table using multiple laptops.
Many of our projects involved downloading large quantities of satellite data. Here’s Sebastian making the most of the notably fast Wi-Fi speed the local café had to offer.

I wanted to use multispectral satellite data, and as someone who loves freediving in California’s kelp forests, I decided to pursue a project mapping kelp canopy using the new Harmonized Landsat Sentinel-2 (HLS) dataset. Specifically, I decided to look at the effect that tides and currents have on canopy detection. I hypothesized that during high tide or strong currents, while less kelp floated on top of the surface, less kelp would be detected. Being able to quantify how these factors affect canopy detection could help us either apply correction factors, or refine our uncertainty in satellite kelp detection.

Going into the internship, I had relatively little experience with Python, but with the help of our coding mentor, Riley McCue, my graduate mentor, Kelby Kramer, and many long hours spent reading Python documentation, I figured out how to download and manipulate satellite data and greatly expanded my programming skill set.

To analyze my data, I used a Machine Learning Classification model to find the kelp in satellite imagery, and then performed spectral unmixing to determine the kelp density of each pixel. If you’re interested in looking at or recreating my analysis, find my git repository here.

This plot shows the kelp that was detected in a satellite image of Santa Barbara, CA. Higher values represent greater kelp density.

When we weren’t working on our projects, we had a lot of fun on trips to NASA facilities, research institutes, and parks!

A clean room with assembly workers in white coveralls operating on a large metallic reflective structure.
We visited the clean room where the Nancy Roman Space Telescope was being assembled!
A group of students and mentors speaking to one another in casual attire.
During our visit to the Goddard Space Flight Center, we had the opportunity to talk to scientists and engineers of all different backgrounds and fields of expertise. Here’s Steven Platnick talking about remote sensing and the challenges of using satellite absorption spectroscopy to measure gas concentrations in the atmospheric column.
A row of beakers in a lab with tubes flowing into and out of them.
Algae culture lab at Virginia Institute of Marine Science
A group picture of students and mentors posing in front of a large lake and dock.
A group picture at Lake Drummond in the Great Dismal Swamp.
A fun image of interns jumping with joy in front of the U.S. Capitol.
The ocean’s group on a trip to Washington D.C.

Final Presentations + Conclusion

A student gives a presentation behind a lectern while his presentation is projected upon a projection wall.
Lucas DiSilvestro in his final presentation explaining how MESMA (Multiple Endmember Spectral Mixture Analysis) works.

As the internship came to an end, we gave our final presentations at the Langley Research Center. Each intern gave a 15 minute presentation on their Summer research for NASA staff, scientists, and their fellow interns. 

From flying among airborne scientists, touring NASA’s laboratories, and the mentorship and support that enabled me to thrive in this foreign environment, to the lifelong friends and connections I’ve made, this internship has been a life changing experience for me and an overall joy. Since finishing SARP, I plan to pursue a PhD in Mechanical Engineering with hopes of one day designing my own optical instrumentation to better understand Earth’s beautiful complexities. 

Atticus Cummings/NASA's Langley Research Center