HAMPTON, Va. (WAVY) – A NASA aircraft will be flying over Hampton Roads during a 12-day period in July as part of an atmospheric campaign in the mid-Atlantic region.
According to NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, P-3 Orion, a four-engine aircraft, will be flying over the I-95 corridor from Washington D.C to Baltimore between July 5 and 16. The aircraft will fly five days during that period and each flight will include a 1,000-foot pass over the Chesapeake Bay and a spiral track over Hampton.
The P-3 Orion will be carrying instruments collecting atmospheric data over variable surface types that will go towards other scientific projects NASA is developing.
NASA tweeted an update that the aircraft team was targeting flights for July 6 between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. over the I-95 corridor from Washington to Baltimore to Hampton.
The flights are a part of the Students Airborne Science Activation program (SaSa), which is designed for first- and second-year college students who are enrolled in Minority-Serving Institutions that allows them to be a part of an authentic NASA field research campaign.
The SaSa program is welcoming their inaugural class this summer and students from Hampton University are among those participating.
Once it takes off, the aircraft can be tracked on the NASA Airborne Science Program Tracker labeled as NASA P-3 (N426NA) and updates can be found on the NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Facebook and Twitter. The day before the flight, Wallops will also post the estimated time the aircraft will fly over Hampton.