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A NASA Gulfstream V has arrived in Australia to monitor an upcoming SpaceX Starship mission.
N95NA, or NASA5, touched down in Brisbane on Monday before flying out to Perth on Tuesday ahead of the launch on 11 January. The aircraft will watch the re-entry of the Starship, which is expected to splash down off the coast of Western Australia.
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“Hosting a NASA jet wasn’t on our bingo card for 2025, but you never know what will turn up at Brisbane Airport,” airport spokesperson Peter Doherty said.
“This brief fuel stop highlights BNE’s strategic location and connectivity with North America, reinforcing our role as a hub for aviation crossing the Pacific.”
The mission was detailed in a letter to the US Federal Aviation Administration by Brett A. Pugsley, chief of flight operations, air operations division at NASA’s Johnson Space Centre last month, in which he requested exemptions to lighting requirements for test flights over the Gulf of Mexico and Southwest Texas to calibrate necessary sensors.
“Due to the sensitivity of the imaging equipment, it is necessary to reduce all exterior and interior lighting to a minimum to calibrate the onboard sensors and collect imagery during the re-entry event scheduled for January 2025,” he wrote.
“NASA5 is equipped with TCAS and ADS-B and will be under ATC control during lightless operations to minimize safety of flight risks. Crew will monitor TCAS, the applicable ATC frequency and maintain a visual lookout while conducting lightless operations in the NOTAM’d airspace.
“The aircraft’s lights status would be communicated to the applicable Air Traffic Control Center before and after the lights out operation.”
According to Pugsley, NASA5 will image Starship’s re-entry and peak-heating events around an hour after launch, as it crosses the horizon and splashes down in the eastern Indian Ocean.
“Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) International Operations division has advised that an exemption from the FAA would be honoured by CASA for NASA5 to conduct the mission rehearsal and mission events under Melbourne Oceanic Centre’s control and international waters,” he said.
“The data collected is essential in understanding space vehicle performance, formulating design improvement, and ultimately making future reusable space vehicles safer for humanity’s ongoing quest to explore the cosmos and advance scientific discovery.”
