NASA USES OF THE RB-57F  

By “Dutch” von Ehrenfried
Mission Manager and Crewmember

 During the “heyday” of the Apollo era, NASA was beginning to think ahead as to what to do with all of the science, engineering, and talented people after the Apollo Program was over. Even while Apollo 8 was being planned, there were people planning Skylab, the U.S.’s first space station, as well as people on the unmanned side of NASA planning the Earth  Resources Technology Satellite ( ERTS ) Program.  

Both of these programs involved extensive Earth observations requiring the use of remote sensors. The military had been involved for years in remote sensing from both aircraft and satellites for reconnaissance purposes but, not for purely scientific applications.  NASA’s charter included the peaceful uses of aviation and space and has many scientific organizations spread around their centers.  

The NASA Manned Spacecraft Center (now called the Johnson Spaceflight Center) in Houston, Texas had an Earth Observations Aircraft Program as far back as November, 1964 to test various systems for Apollo.  The story of the RB-57F starts in 1968 with a contract with the Air Force to utilize one Air Weather Service aircraft for the high altitude phase of the overall program which at that time, also included  a Convair 240A, a Lockheed P-3A and a Lockheed C-130B. Aircraft number 13501 was delivered to Ellington AFB near the Manned Spacecraft Center in September, 1968.

 This aircraft had to be modified at the General Dynamics plant at Carswell AFB in Ft. Worth , Texas . This plant also did the long wing and enlarged tail modifications to the airframe earlier. A pallet was designed for the bomb bay that could carry approximately 4,000 lbs. of sensors for the scientific community. They also configured the rear cockpit for the sensor operator to control the payload during the flight.

 A typical payload during the ‘60s and ‘70s consisted of the following:  

• One 10 power zooming television (for the operator to see the ground track)
• Two RC-8 cameras with 9 inch format (one photo covers 196 square miles)
• Six Hasselblad Multi-band cameras
• One Zeiss camera with 9 inch format-either 6 or 12 inch focal length
• One bore sight camera
• One RS-7 IR scanner
• One IR spectrometer
• One IR Radiometer
• Two 14 channel Analog Magnetic Tape Recorders
• A complement of support systems

     
Scientists from many agencies and universities became Principal Investigators sponsoring the flights and determining the sites to be over flown and the detailed mission requirements. Their disciplines covered agriculture, forestry, cartography, geography, geology, hydrology, meteorology and oceanography. They would meet with various people supporting the program including the engineering labs, photo labs, data processing facilities, testing and maintenance, and, of course, the crews.                                                                

 The first flight of the NASA configured RB-57F was in July, 1969. Most flights were at an altitude of 60,000 to 65,000 ft. One notable exception was a short notice flight to photograph the Tago-Sato-Kosaka comet on January 21, 1970 . Since all of the sensors are “down-lookers” the sensor operator used hand held cameras in an attempt to get the sponsoring scientist some data. The 4,000 lb. payload was off loaded and using a light fuel load, an altitude of a little over 70,000 ft. was reached. However, not much useful data was obtained since the comet was much dimmer than expected and the combined aircraft and operator vibrations smeared the images.

 Another interesting and more typical scientific flight occurred on April 29, 1970 . It included taking data on the tops of the “anvil” of a severe storm located over Texas and Oklahoma . This flight is more representative of the vast cooperation between various scientific communities. In this meteorology mission, there were scientists from NASA’s Johnson Space Center , NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and NOAA’s highly instrumented National Severe Storms Laboratory. Data from the Nimbus 4 spacecraft’s Temperature Humidity Infrared Radiometer was compared to the data from the aircraft and the ground.

 This experiment was undertaken to measure the equivalent blackbody temperature of cloud tops of a severe storm (as compared to measurements from radiosondes) to determining radiative heat transfer mechanisms in the cloud top. Temperature anomalies were observed about 500 meters in diameter near opposite sides of a 1 kilometer wide and 13.8 kilometer high cloud tower. The RB-57F was at a radar altitude of 63,500ft. or over 20 kilometers.

 The aircraft’s infrared spectrometer and spacecraft’s radiometer were used to measure the radiance of the cells in the storm while the sensors on the ground measured it’s intensity from their perspective leading to a better understanding of the structure inside the storm. Today, we commonly hear of the cells inside of thunderstorms and pilots stay clear of the severe up and down drafts.

Other mission examples included: damage assessment of Hurricane Camille along the Mississippi coast in August, 1969, the Lubbock , Texas tornado in May of 1970, and the survey of 20 US cities for the USGS during, but not apart of, the 1970 census. The use of this and other NASA remote sensing aircraft was briefed to the United Nations Delegation of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space.

During the period from the first NASA flight in 1969 to the time when this aircraft was retired around 1980, there were perhaps hundreds of scientific flights. Considering the number of people and agencies involved just in the storm mission example above, one can imagine the amount of science gathered by this one aircraft. Some scientists got their PhDs and many made major contributions to society all with the help of this unique aircraft. It’s once beautiful airframe now lies as a mere hulk of aluminum at the Pima Air Museum in Arizona,   a very sad sight for those of us so uniquely involved with her life.

Two WB-57Fs still live on flying missions out of Ellington Field just outside of the NASA Johnson Space Center. For more information email Dutch.vonehrenfried@raymondjames.com

 MORE INFORMATION AND PHOTOS at
  http://jsc-aircraft-ops.jsc.nasa.gov/wb57/

AND
 http://www.nasa.gov/missions/research/b-57_feature.html