You know the space agency best for the way it uses probes, landers, telescopes, and satellites to show you worlds beyond your own, but the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has plenty of tools for taking a close look at Earth, too.
To study the home planet's atmosphere, weather, ice masses, and oceans, NASA operates a diverse fleet of aircraft, from the high-flying ER-2 to the Global Hawk drone. (For now, at least: President-elect Donald Trump has said he wants the agency to concentrate on the out there, rather than the down here.)
Among those aircraft is the 1966 Lockheed P-3 in the 3D model you see above. This old turboprop is the workhorse aircraft for NASA’s Operation IceBridge, keeping an eye on glaciers around Greenland and other chilly areas. We caught it at rest in the D1 hangar at NASA Wallops Flight Facility, in Virginia, being retrofitted with the instruments it will need to help measure ice thickness at the poles.
As you clamber through the digital recreation of the P-3, follow the description of Mike Cropper, the aircraft operations manager.
Cropper starts the tour aboard the plane, looking towards the cockpit, which NASA actually calls the flight station. “The plane is going through it’s annual inspection, during the lull in the science flying season,” he says. You can see four seats up there: pilot, co-pilot, and flight engineer in the center; the back seat is for the mission manager.
Spin around and look backward, and you’ll get a rare look at the empty cabin. Because the plane is in maintenance, the science gear has been removed. It takes NASA’s crew two to three weeks to strip the plane down and refit it. They use the seat tracks in the floor to secure the equipment racks. “For operation IceBridge this cabin will be so full you have to walk down it sideways,” says Cropper.
As you move toward the rear, check out the bank of doors with switches and dials. That’s the Lockheed-built power system, which NASA heavily modified for these missions.
The window holes are a couple of different sizes on this plane. The circular windows are standard on a P3, but the smaller ones are from a DC8. They can be removed and replaced with instruments. You can see a couple of those from the last mission lying on the floor---they're the white circular discs with pipes and tubes sticking out.
Right at the back, there’s the in-flight-food service, such that it is. Just a small fridge and microwave. There’s a lavatory back there too, because missions last eight to nine hours. Still, it sounds better than a standard flight in economy. “The seats are pretty comfortable,” says Cropper.
Click the "up" arrow at the bottom left of the model to get a list of highlights, and jump to “under the fuselage” to continue the tour outside the aircraft.
Those things that look like air horns? They’re exhaust ports left over from the last mission, which sucked in air over Namibia to study polution, says Cropper. Walk toward the rear again, and spot the guy standing on a lift, installing a radar antenna. “That’s designed to penetrate the ice in the arctic, Greenland, and Antartica.” Cropper and his team of engineers remove the standard bomb bay doors, and install scientific instruments instead.
If you take a virtual step back from the plane, you will see how pristine NASA keeps its hangar. The model will let you walk around the entire plane, or if you click on “view dollhouse” you can even fly around the space. Use your arrow keys to change your perspective.
The P-3 plane will be ready for test flights in February, and is scheduled to leave for Greenland on March 6.
