As part of a science mission tracking one of Earth’s most precious resources — water — NASA’s C-20A aircraft conducted a series of seven research flights in March that can help researchers track the process and timeline as snow melts and transforms into a freshwater resource.
The agency’s Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar installed on the aircraft collected measurements of seasonal snow cover and estimated the freshwater contained in it.
“Seasonal snow is a critical resource for drinking water, power generation, supporting multi-billion dollar agricultural and recreation industries,” says Starr Ginn, C-20A project manager at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in
