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NASA photo
NASA's Pathfinder-Plus flies over Kauai in 1998.
NASA plans to test Helios, its newest solar-powered
aircraft, here next year.

NASA to test new
unmanned solar aircraft
here next year

Spectral spyplane eyeing isles

By Anthony Sommer
Kauai correspondent

BARKING SANDS, Kauai --NASA officials were at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility last week to begin preparations for testing Helios, its newest unmanned solar-powered airplane, over Kauai in the summer of 2001.

The missile range was used in 1997 for testing the first solar aircraft Pathfinder and in 1998 for flying a stretch-wing version called Pathfinder-Plus.

On its third flight over Kauai, Pathfinder-Plus set the current world altitude record for a propeller-driven aircraft: 80,200 feet. NASA hopes to send Helios above 100,000 feet when it flies at Barking Sands next year.

NASA's solar-powered aircraft project is aimed at developing what the space agency calls "the eternal airplane" capable of flying months at a time at altitudes well above most of the Earth's atmosphere and all of its weather. It will be capable of performing many of the scientific tasks now handled by satellites but at a far lower cost.

Helios is twice as big as Pathfinder-Plus with a wingspan of 247 feet compared with 121 feet. The Pathfinder-Plus wingspan was about the same as the Boeing 737s flown by Aloha Airlines. The Helios wingspan is bigger than that of a Boeing 747.

NASA expects to bring Helios to Kauai in April 2001. After about four or five weeks of preparations, flights are scheduled to begin in early June 2001 and tests will continue through August, said Alan Brown, spokesman for NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif.

Helios completed an series of low-altitude validation test flights under battery power late last year at Dryden. Over the course of the next year, solar panels for the aircraft's 14 electric motors will be installed and various systems improvements made to increase reliability in the extremely cold temperatures of the stratosphere.

John Del Frate, NASA Dryden's solar-powered aircraft project manager who headed the Pathfinder-Plus team on Kauai in 1998, and Rick Meininger, program manager for Helios builder AeroVironment, Inc., met with PMRF officials on Kauai last week to discuss a variety of issues.

Among them are plans to smooth out the taxiway to allow safe takeoffs and landings from the apron, since the main runway is not wide enough to handle the span of the Helios prototype's landing gear, which is almost 165 feet.

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High-flying
spectrometer
has its eyes
on the isles

By Anthony Sommer
Kauai correspondent

LIHUE -- Even as you're reading this, you could be photographed either digitally or on film by an Airborne Visible and Infra-Red Imaging Spectrometer shooting your picture in 224 spectral channels from an airplane flying 13 miles above you.

For most of April, NASA's Airborne Science ER-2 research aircraft is scanning all of Hawaii. The ER-2 the science version of the famous U-2 spy plane used early in the Cold War and one of two based at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. The aircraft started flying from Hickam Air Force Base last week.

The ER-2's instruments are mapping the extent and distribution of coral reefs in the greater Hawaiian chain, studying volcanic flows and gas plumes over Hawaii's big island and tracking land-use changes, according to NASA.

The aircraft's last photo mission to Hawaii was September 1992, when it conducted a damage assessment after Hurricane Iniki.

The ER-2 carries two digital scanners and two film cameras. The Airborne Visible and Infra-Red Imaging Spectrometer looks downward at the Earth simultaneously in 224 spectral bands. Different spectral bands can be used to study geology, agriculture, forestry, land use, atmospheric composition and weather.

The ER-2 also is carrying a second scanner duplicating one launched in December on NASA's Terra Satellite to study the Earth's global energy balance and contribute to climate change studies. The instruments flying on the ER-2 will be used to calibrate and verify the satellite data.

The ER-2 aircraft typically flies at 65,000 feet. It is 63 feet long, with a wingspan of 104 feet.