NASA begins low-altitude research flights over Colorado to study farm emissions
NASA's new FarmFlux mission has started low-altitude research flights over Colorado, the first in a series measuring farm emissions including methane, ammonia and ozone.
NASA has started a new airborne mission to measure pollution rising from farmland and animal farms, beginning with low-altitude research flights over Colorado.
The FarmFlux mission will deploy more than a dozen sensors to measure ozone, methane, ammonia, particulates and other pollutants rising from agricultural land and animal farms, and their interaction with the Earth’s atmosphere. The mission is jointly led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, Colorado State University and Boston University.
The Colorado deployment is the first series of flights for FarmFlux. Further low-altitude research flights are scheduled over farmland near Amarillo, Texas, from late October to early November. For the March to July 2027 growing season, NASA P-3 Orion aircraft are scheduled to fly over the Midwest and California’s Central Valley, with a focus on croplands.
The mission treats agricultural emissions as an important and understudied part of the Earth’s land and atmosphere systems, with the sensors tracking what farm regions release into the air and how those pollutants interact with the atmosphere above them.
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