2009 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

Flight Request System
The year 2009 was very productive for the Airborne
Science Program Science Operations Flight Request
System (SOFRS). Improvements have been made
to the SOFR system to reflect additional requested
changes in notifications and access. SOFRS can be
accessed through the website (http://airbornescience.
nasa.gov).
There were 167 flight requests submitted in 2009.
Seventy flight requests were completed, 42 were
rolled over to 2010 and the rest were withdrawn or
canceled depending upon the availability of resources
at the time of the request. The details are listed
below.
Flight requests were submitted for 15 aircraft platforms
and flew more than 1800 flight hours in all.
Several large campaigns were successfully conducted
this year (CASIE, ASCENDS, Operation ICE Bridge
etc).
Aircraft Submitted Total Approved Total Completed
Total Science Flight
Hours Flown
DC-8 8 3 3 20.3
ER-2 31 17 13 150.7
P-3 15 9 7 216.1
WB-57 10 1 1 44.5
Twin Otter 26 4 2 103.8
B-200 13 8 8 331.8
G-III 33 25 24 526.0
Lear 25 5 NA* 3 66.7
T-34 1 1 1 26.4
Cessna 206 1 1 1 41.0
Aerosonde 3 0 0 0
Global Hawk 3 1 0 0
Ikhana 3 0 0 0
Blank 14 4 .. 10
SIERRA 8 5 5 76
Other 7 2 2 273.4
TOTAL: 167 80 70 1876.7
KEY
Submitted:
Total Approved:
Flight Request entered into the system.
All flight requests that have been approved.
Total Completed: Flight requests completed in 2009.
Table 1: Flight requests for FY2009.
*Some internally approved Langley B-200 and GRC Learjet 25 and T-34 flight requests were separate from the
ASP FR system but the completed science hours are reflected in this summary.
Aircraft hours flown for maintenance, check flights and pilot proficiencies are not included in these totals.
The annual Airborne Science Call Letter was distributed in June of 2009. Airborne Science aircraft science flight
hours are continuing to increase.
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