TRY using new knowledge about the aircraft and mission planning to develop a flight plan for the mission.

Refer students to the Activity sheet: NASA
Airborne science flight
request form (DMFP-5) in their journal. Remind them that they completed one like this in a previous lesson "What are airborne mission scientists?"

Ask What else do we need to develop to plan this flight? We know the following information:

• Type of aircraft and remote sensing instrument.
• Purpose for the flight.
• Location and time for data collection.
• How does the pilot know where to fly?

Prompt students to think about the mission:

• Where are the takeoff and landing locations?
• How far is it between these locations?
• What are the capabilities of the aircraft?
• What other conditions need to be accounted for in the mission plan?

Project examples of flight paths for other types of missions. This will give students an idea of how mission planners create different patterns to collect different types of data. 

Prompt student to think about: 

• Why are there different types of path ways to fly?

State these are complex flight plans and should give you an idea about specific plans the mission planner provides to a pilot who flies a mission. Our flight path will be much simpler, basically we will fly from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force (home of the ER-2) to the mission target (Kailua) and eventually back to Dryden. Your job is to think about the important questions about the mission and develop a flight plan to go with the Activity sheet:
NASA Airborne science
flight request form (DMFP-5). 

Remind students to consider the information they gathered on their worksheet, e.g., aircraft characteristics, remote sensing instrument requirements, weather, etc.

Direct students to work in groups to complete the Activity sheet: NASA Airborne science
flight request form (DMFP-5).

Ask students to work in groups to complete Activity sheet: Flight planning table (DMFP-6) and consider the elements of flight planning while they plan the flight over Kilauea. 

Teacher Note:

• Explain that the map builder for great circle flight path display does not recognize military airports and, thus, they have to use Honolulu Airport as a landing site (the closest civilian airport) for this exercise instead of Hickam airport.

Ask students to draw a flight path from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base to Kailua.

• Ask students to what is an overall flight path. 
  
  

• Have students imagine their flight path by exploring
  the map of North America and
  the map of islands of Hawaii.
  
  

• Ask students to draw a flight path from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base to Honolulu Airport on the Activity sheet: Map of airborne
  remote sensing mission flight path (DMFP-7) based on the information collected from the
  great circle flight path display on the map of North America.
  
  

• Ask students draw a flight path from Honolulu Airport to Kailua on the Activity sheet: Map of airborne
  remote sensing mission flight path (DMFP-7) on the map of the islands of Hawaii. 

 

 

 

Debrief activity by having students share their flight plans.

• Students present their flight plans to the class.
• Students provide feedback on each other's plans.
• Teacher should distribute Actual flight path (1).
• Print Actual flight path (2)

Prompt students to discuss the differences and similarities between their flight plans and the actual NASA mission:
(1)actual flight path from Dryden to Honolulu, 
(2)actual flight path from Honolulu to Kailua Bay, and 
(3) narratives of actual flight plan.

• What are the differences between your plans and the actual NASA mission plan?

• Why?

Prompt students to complete the reflection page in their journals. See Activity sheet: Reflection page(DMFP-9)

Summarize lesson and introduce next steps: collecting and analyzing the data!

Teacher resources:

• ER-2 Typical Flight Operations 

• ER-2 operating bases