Lockheed U-2 ER-2

ER-2 stands for Earth Resources 2. NASA acquired the first in 1981 and the second in 1989, replacing two U-2s the agency had used since 1971 to collect science data. One of them, serial 80-1063, was built new; the other, 80-1097, is a converted TR-1A. They fly as N806NA and N809NA in the agency’s white livery. The aircraft were based at Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, until 1997, when the ER-2s and their operations moved to Armstrong Flight Research Center; today they work out of Building 703 in Palmdale. Since the Airborne Science Program’s first flight on 31 August 1971, NASA U-2s and ER-2s have flown more than 4,500 data missions and test flights.

ER-2 work spans Earth resources, celestial observation, atmospheric chemistry and dynamics and oceanic processes, along with electronic sensor development and satellite data calibration and validation: flying above most of the atmosphere, the aircraft offers a testbed midway between the laboratory and orbit. In the summers of 2021 and 2022 the DCOTSS campaign, based at Salina, Kansas, carried twelve instruments to measure trace gases, aerosols and reactive species in the lower stratosphere and to understand how strong convective systems penetrate the tropopause under the North American Monsoon Anticyclone. Over a three-winter campaign the aircraft studied the banded structure of snowstorms in the south-eastern United States, poorly reproduced by numerical models. In August 2018 it flew two missions with infrared sensors to map the Mendocino Complex Fire.

On 19 November 1998 a NASA ER-2 set a world altitude record in horizontal flight for aircraft with take-off weights between 26,455 and 35,275 pounds, reaching 68,700 feet (20,479 metres). Landings still require, as on any U-2, a second pilot chasing the aircraft in a car at more than 190 kilometres per hour.