Wyoming King Air as a National Facility

University Of Wyoming, Laramie WY

Investigators

Abstract

The University of Wyoming (UW) will maintain and operate a King Air aircraft as a NSF national facility. UW has operated the King Air as a NSF facility since 1987. During the period of this Cooperative Agreement, pending availability of funds, UW will also operate and maintain the Wyoming Cloud Radar (WCR) as part of the King Air (KA) research aircraft system. The combined KA/WCR system will greatly expand the scientific capability of the facility. The KA has had considerable upgrades made to it during the period of performance of the last Cooperative Agreement. These upgrades have been funded by NSF, NASA and the Office of Naval Research. The facility is state-of-the art, and new instrumentation is continually being integrated into the research platform. A large number of upcoming NSF funded science programs will depend upon the KA/WCR system, greatly enabling new science. The program will also have broader impacts due to the broad participation of students from universities throughout the country. In addition, K-12 students have been introduced to the types of research that the aircraft enables, and this effort will be expanded during the time period of the new Cooperative Agreement.