Spy plane observes how storms produce radioactive clouds and antimatter
In 1960, the Soviet Union shot down the plane of U.S. pilot Francis Gary Powers as he flew over Yekaterinburg. The pilot was captured alive and sentenced to 10 years in prison, while the wreckage was put on public display. It was known as the U2 incident, named after the spy plane piloted by Powers — an aircraft designed at the CIA’s request to fly at high altitudes and photograph Communist arsenals without detection.
Six decades later, the same type of aircraft — now converted for scientific use — has enabled scientists to see what happens inside thunderstorms as never before. While thunderstorms can be studied from both Earth and space, the exact mechanisms that trigger lightning remain unknown. Lightning can heat the atmosphere to an astonishing 20,000 degrees Celsius, three times hotter than the surface of the Sun.
In July 2023, NASA carried out 10 flights with its ER-2 aircraft, the same model as the U2s used in the Cold War. The U.S. space agency aimed to conduct an unprecedented experiment: to ascend to an altitude of 12 miles and repeatedly fly over the most severe tropical storms in the Caribbean and Central America at that time. This jet — equipped with scientific instruments — can glide for hours. On the ground, a team of researchers, meteorologists, and military personnel guided the pilot, alerting them to the location of impending electrical discharges with the code word “glow!” The pilot navigate just 1.5 miles from the clouds and their electrical activity, bringing science closer to storms than ever before.
