NASA brings advanced aircraft to Wisconsin

A new aircraft used for atmospheric research will visit Madison’s Truax Field Monday, July 9, brought here by UW–Madison’s Space Science and Engineering Center and hosted by the 115 Fighter Wing, Wisconsin Air National Guard.

The Proteus, a high-altitude long-duration instrument platform, has two sets of wings that give it the appearance of a long skinny biplane. Its modular construction allows it to fly high or low in the atmosphere and carry different sizes of payloads in a pod under the aircraft.

It can be flown with or without a pilot at the controls. It will be piloted when it comes to Madison.

Proteus was built by California’s Scaled Composites Inc. and is based at the company’s Mojave, Calif., facility near NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center, which is home to the ER-2, the NASA high-altitude plane most familiar to Wisconsin residents.

The Proteus will swoop in to Truax to retrieve a NASA instrument that was trucked to Madison for comparison tests with SSEC instruments. The work is in preparation for a field experiment called CLAMS, for Chesapeake Lighthouse and Aircraft Measurements for Satellites.

CLAMS takes place this summer off the coast of Virginia Beach, Va. Primarily, the experiment seeks to refine the way current and future satellites measure aerosols and heat reflected by earth and sea. Instrument teams from NASA, University of Washington and UW–Madison’s SSEC will collaborate on the project.

According to National Guard Major David Olson, no public tours or viewing are planned on base. but the Proteus is expected to arrive at noon Monday, July 9, and leave in the early morning of Tuesday, July 10. Research aircraft generally use the North-South runway, which can be viewed from the Madison airport, or any nearby vantage point.