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NASA will be conducting low-altitude flights over the Philly region this week

The planes will perform "vertical spirals between 1,000 and 10,000 feet, circling above power plants, landfills, and urban areas," NASA said.

NASA’s P-3 Orion aircraft, based out of the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, and another plane are conducting low-altitude flights over the Philadelphia region.
NASA’s P-3 Orion aircraft, based out of the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, and another plane are conducting low-altitude flights over the Philadelphia region.Read moreNASA

Two NASA research aircraft are conducting low-altitude atmospheric research flights over the Philadelphia area until Thursday, the Center City District said in an alert issued Monday.

The flights, which are part of a training program, may cause some alarm for people who see the planes and don’t know what is happening — thus the Center City District alert, which was described as being intended for “situational awareness.”

“Pilots will operate the aircraft at altitudes lower than typical commercial flights, executing specialized maneuvers such as vertical spirals between 1,000 and 10,000 feet, circling above power plants, landfills, and urban areas,” NASA said on its website.

“The flights will also include occasional missed approaches at local airports and low-altitude flybys along runways to collect air samples near the surface,” NASA said.

The flights began Sunday and will continue until July 2 over areas that include the Baltimore region and some cities in Virginia, NASA said. Similar flights also will be conducted in California starting next week.

NASA said the flights are part of the agency’s Student Airborne Research Program (SARP), an eight-week summer internship, and involve a P-3 Orion aircraft and a King Air B200 aircraft.

“The P-3, operated out of NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, is a four-engine turboprop aircraft outfitted with a six-instrument science payload to support a combined 40 hours of SARP science flights on each U.S. coast,” NASA said.

“The King Air B200 will fly at the same time as the P-3 but in an independent flight profile. Students will assist in the operation of the science instruments on the aircraft to collect atmospheric data,” NASA said.

Brian Bernth, chief of flight operations at NASA Wallops, said in a statement that the training flights “expose highly competitive STEM students to real-world data gathering within a dynamic flight environment.”

As part of the training, the P-3 “is being flown and performing maneuvers in some of [the] most complex and restricted airspace in the country,” Bernth said.

“Tight coordination and crew resource management is needed to ensure that these flights are executed with precision but also safely,” he said.