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REDUNDANCY, PAYLOAD…AND IT CAN FLY INVERTED
The Viking was an excellent choice to fulfill this aspect of GRC’s mission. According to Jim Demers, GRC’s Chief of Aircraft Operations, one of the main keys to success is the Viking’s redundancy. Designed to hunt Soviet submarines during the Cold War, the Viking was built with a little extra of everything. This redundancy made it the perfect platform for the modifications NASA needed to make to turn it into a world-class airborne laboratory. The Viking has excess thrust, the wings generate excess lift and the fuselage has more than enough capacity to adapt to any mission. Given its Cold War mission, the Viking can safely operate in just about any weather conditions, can carry internal and external stores, and has space for computer and research equipment and two researchers in addition to the two pilots. And yes, it can fly inverted.
NASA’s Viking has been outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment including an Inmarsat Swift Broad-band satellite terminal. This terminal provides the crew and researchers with global voice and high-speed data coverage. The Internet-protocol-based packet-switched data service provides a symmetric “always-on” data connection up to 432 kbps. Adding to the Viking’s versatility, GRC utilizes the HAMMER (Highly Adaptable Multimission Experimental Research) Pod. The Pod vastly enhances GRC’s mission to get projects from TRL 4 to TRL 6 by allowing for the rapid transition of experiments from the laboratory to flight testing.
APJ/RICARDO VON PUTTKAMMER