Boarding the Aircraft

NASA instrument scientist Holly Bender climbs onboard the Dynamic Aviation B-200 aircraft, before flying over a prescribed burn as part of the 2025 NASA FireSense research campaign. Bender works with the AVIRIS-3 instrument, which stands for Airborne Visible and InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer 3. AVIRIS-3 is able to cut through smoke to provide precise information on the burn perimeter, active firelines, and any additional hotspots. During the campaign, the team was testing the instrument's new capability to stream this information to practitioners on the ground within minutes of capture, which would be a valuable tool during an active wildfire.