A Boeing 747 that functions as GE Aerospace’s Flying Test Bed sat on the runway towering over NASA Langley Research Center’s G-III aircraft at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton on Monday, Nov. 25, 2024.
Scientists are using the planes to study contrails, clouds that form when water vapor condenses and freezes around small particles in aircraft exhaust, and their impact on atmospheric warming. To collect the necessary data, the G-III flies behind GE Aerospace’s Flying Test Bed, a Boeing 747, in the sky and scans the aircraft wake with Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) technology to create three-dimensional images of contrails.