Over the past 30+ years, more than a hundred unique instruments have been flown for various NASA science investigations, ranging from remote sensing devices, to in situ atmospheric samplers, to astrophysical experiments.
PI Instruments
Most airborne payloads are designed, built and managed by Principal Investigators (PI) either at various NASA field centers, universities, companies or other government agencies. Because these PI Instruments are owned and maintained by these various institutions, use of these systems must be arranged directly with the instrument PI.
Instrument integration and cross-aircraft portability
Traditionally airborne measurement systems have been integrated onto a particular aircraft based upon observing requirements, which then performed all of the required data collection flights. Increasingly however, instruments are being designed to be platform-independent, which increases both mission flexibility and the number of research flight opportunities.
NASA Airborne Science Instrument Database
The Instrument Database is a partial listing of the science instruments that are currently integrated and operational on the various catalog aircraft and the procedures for integrating a new instrument onto a NASA (or NASA-contract) aircraft. We encourage you to contact us if you’d like to add information on new instruments to our database.
