This evening a 4 engine jet flow only a few hundred feet over the house from a direction that had no airport. The disturbing feature besides it being so low was that it was climbing when it was visible. Looked old. I got on flight Aware and believe I found the plane. It was National Aeronautics and Space Administration 817 # NASA817. An old McDonald Douglas jet with 4 engines . The flight plan showed it flew like a moth all over points in north nj before hitting central NJ, and headed west to FFO. Anybody else see this???
Gathering Intel. Have anything on your phone you didn’t want copied.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/low-altitude-flights-study-everyday-emissions
News story from a similar flight in Connecticut a couple weeks ago: Did you see a low-flying jet in CT this week? That was likely NASA, the agency says | Connecticut Public
NASA has several aircraft that they use for atmospheric sampling. You could have seen their DC8 that’s featured on several of the NASA channel programs. I also regularly track their aircraft which include a few “repurposed” spy craft like the U2 and RB57. They also have drones and of course the flying “Guppy”.
Thanks for the heads up on that. Makes sense given the really eccentric flight pattern over the entire area, even with exceptional traffic.
Chicago about 4 days ago. Some of the busiest airspace on the planet and we have the aircraft (same one) flying very low over Chicago some 4800 mile grid pattern before it returned to Dayton O. Presumably studying the grass growth in the cracks of the sidewalks or Teetsie Fly population?
I will not guess any further, but I was not born yesterday.