In 1960, the Soviet Union shot down American pilot aircraft Francis Gary Powers when he flew over Yekaterinburg. The pilot was captured alive and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and the wreckage of the aircraft was put up for public display. This incident has become known as Case U2, named after the spy pilot manned by Powers – aircraft – aircraft, designed at the request of the CIA for flights at high altitude and photographing military facilities without detection.
Six decades later, the same type of aircraft – now transformed for scientific purposes – helped scientists see the internal processes taking place in thunderstorms as never before. Although thunderstorms can be studied both from Earth and from the cosmos, the exact mechanisms that launch lightning remain unsolved. Lightning can heat the atmosphere up to 20,000 degrees Celsius, which is three times higher than the surface temperature of the sun.
In July 2023, NASA held 10 flights on its ER-2 aircraft modified version of the U2 used during the Cold War. The American space agency set a goal to conduct an unprecedented experiment: to rise to a height of 12 miles and fly repeatedly over the strongest tropical storms in the Caribbean and Central America. The plane, equipped with scientific devices, could plan for hours. On Earth, a team of scientists and meteorologists in real-time directed the pilot, warning about the approach of electric discharges using the code word “glow!” The pilot was only 1.5 miles from the clouds and their electrical activity, which allowed science to get closer to the storms as never before.
The results of