NASA's ER-2s: the civilian U-2s

NASA has flown U-2s since 1971, when it borrowed two early models for Earth-resources work, and in the 1980s Lockheed built the ER-2 for it on the larger U-2R airframe. The two aircraft NASA flies today are 1980s airframes: one built new as an ER-2 and one converted from an Air Force TR-1A, both upgraded to U-2S standard with the General Electric F118 engine and modern cockpits. They moved from the Ames Research Center in California's Bay Area to Dryden, now Armstrong, in 1997 and to Armstrong's Palmdale facility in 2010.

The ER-2 is a single-seat glider with a jet engine: a 105-foot wing on a slim fuselage, outrigger wheels that drop off on takeoff and a bicycle undercarriage that makes landing famously difficult, with a chase car racing down the runway to call out the height. The pilot wears a full pressure suit because at 70,000 feet the air is too thin to survive a cabin failure without one.

Almost every Earth-observing satellite NASA launches has an ER-2 in its history, flying the same instrument at altitude to prove it before launch and to check its data afterward. The aircraft have mapped wildfires in California with infrared sensors, including the Mendocino Complex fire in 2018, flown over hurricanes to measure their structure from above, sampled stratospheric ozone and volcanic ash, carried lidar for forest and ice studies and tested communications and sensor systems for the Air Force. Missions deploy worldwide: the ER-2s have operated from Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Costa Rica, Scandinavia and Africa. Between deployments they fly from Palmdale over the Mojave Desert and the Pacific, which is where the tracker usually finds them.

A very long, straight wing, a tiny fuselage, a single engine inlet on each side behind the cockpit and a tail that looks borrowed from a sailplane. NASA's are white with a blue cheatline and NASA titles, with large white pods under each wing on many missions. On the tracker they broadcast N806NA and N809NA with NASA callsigns, at altitudes of 60,000 to 70,000 feet and speeds around 400 knots, often tracing survey lines back and forth.