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Contrails Carry Clues to More Eco-Friendly Flights

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.
NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Puffy white exhaust contrails stream from the engines of NASA’s DC-8 flying laboratory in this image taken from an HU-25 Falcon flying about 300 feet behind. NASA researchers have begun a series of flights using the agency’s DC-8 to study the effects of alternate biofuel on engine performance, emissions and aircraft-generated contrails at altitude.
The DC-8 is using conventional JP-8 jet fuel, or a 50-50 blend of JP-8 and an alternative fuel of hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids that comes from camelina plants. More than a dozen instruments mounted on the Falcon jet are characterizing the soot and gases streaming from the DC-8, monitoring the way exhaust plumes change in composition as they mix with air, and investigating the role emissions play in contrail formation.