Anyone in the Texas Panhandle who spots a twin-engine plane flying unusually low over feedlots this fall can relax: it is science, not a crop duster gone rogue. NASA says it is flying low-altitude research flights over farmland near Amarillo, Texas, from Thursday, Oct. 22, through Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, to measure what livestock and crop operations release into the air.
The flights are part of a NASA mission called FarmFlux, announced in a NASA news release that the agency updated Oct. 21 to correct the flight location.
The low-flying plane over Amarillo farmland
According to NASA, the aircraft is a Dynamic Aviation A200, a two-engine plane flying low near animal feeding operations to measure their gas and particle emissions. NASA did not publish a daily flight schedule or a specific altitude, describing the work only as low-flying research flights. Weather has a way of shaping any outdoor plan in the region, and the NOAA winter outlook gives a sense of what the season may bring to the southern Plains.
The A200 is a member of the Beechcraft Super King Air family, a twin-turboprop line that first flew in 1972 and is widely used for surveys and utility work, according to Wikipedia’s entry on the aircraft. It runs on Pratt and Whitney Canada PT6A turboprop engines, and the A200 version was originally built for the U.S. military. Homeowners who watch the sky for wildlife, and who have read up on the things that scare birds away from a yard, will find this visitor louder than most but harmless.
What FarmFlux is measuring from the air
The FarmFlux mission page says the airborne instruments will measure ozone, methane, ammonia and other pollutants, with more than a dozen sensors in all. The big scientific goal is to track how nitrogen cycles between farms and the atmosphere…