F-106 model testing in 6ft w.t. test-050-1-66

A collection of NASA's research aircraft on the ramp at the Dryden Flight Research Center in July 1997: X-31, F-15 ACTIVE, SR-71, F-106, F-16XL Ship #2, X-38, Radio Controlled Mothership and X-36.

The original seven Mercury astronauts during training at NASA Langley Research Center Project Mercury. The original seven astronauts trained at NASA Langley Research Center. Chosen from among hundreds of applicants, the seven men were all test pilots. Standing in front of the U.S. Air Force Convair F-106B aircraft, the astronauts are, from left, Lt. M. Scott Carpenter, Capt. Gordon Cooper, Col. John H. Glenn Jr., Capt. Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Lt. Comdr. Walter Schirra, Lt. Comdr. Alan B. Shepard Jr. and Capt. Donald K. "Deke" Slayton. While familiarizing the astronauts with the Mercury set-up, Langley employees helped them to specialize in the technical areas crucial to the overall success of Project Mercury. Langley people also guided and monitored the astronauts activities through the many spaceflight simulators and other training devices built at the Center expressly for the manned space program. In less than three years, Project Mercury proved that men could be sent into space and returned safely to Earth, setting the stage for the longer duration Gemini flights and the Apollo lunar landings. This photograph was originally taken on 01/20/1961 and is published in Spaceflight Revolution NASA Langley Research Center from Sputnik to Apollo, NASA SP-4308, by James R. Hansen, 1995, page 40.

Eclipse program F-106 aircraft in flight, front view.

Eclipse project F-106 under tow on January 23, 1998

M61-00017 (10 Jan. 1961) --- Astronaut M. Scott Carpenter on flight line with a F-106. Photo credit: NASA

M61-00012 (20 Jan. 1961) --- Astronaut Alan B. Shepard Jr. pictured on the flight line climbing aboard a F-106 aircraft. Photo credit: NASA or National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Pilot Mark Stucky in Eclipse Simulator

U.S. Navy F/A-18 jets from Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106 and Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 34, from Naval Air Station Oceana (Va.) fly in a "Missing Man" formation over the Camargo Club following a memorial service celebrating the life of Neil Armstrong, Friday, Aug. 31, 2012, in Cincinnati. Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, died Saturday, Aug. 25. He was 82. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) pilot Cliff Crabbs and the flight operations crew prepare a Convair F-106B Delta Dart for a flight from the Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. NASA acquired the aircraft three years earlier to investigate noise-reducing inlet and nozzle designs for the supersonic transport engine program. Two General Electric J85 engines were installed underneath the aircraft’s delta wings to simulate the general shape of the supersonic transport’s engines. One of the engines was modified with experimental inlet or nozzle configurations. The unmodified engine was used for comparison. Most F-106B flights were flown in a 200-mile path over the lake between Buffalo and Sandusky, known as the Lake Erie Corridor. The 1100-miles per hour flight took only 11 minutes at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The aircraft almost always returned with a depleted fuel supply so a Visual Flight Rules operation was required. Following the crash of another jet fighter at Lewis in July 1969, the F-106s were stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan. NASA pilots flew transport planes each morning to the base before commencing the F-106B missions.

STS060-S-106 (3 Feb 1994) --- Palm trees are silhouetted in the foreground of this 70mm image as the Space Shuttle Discovery heads toward an eight-day mission in Earth orbit. Liftoff occurred as scheduled at 7:10 a.m. (EST), February 3, 1994. Aboard the spacecraft were astronauts Charles F. Bolden Jr., commander; Kenneth S. Reightler Jr., pilot; Franklin R. Chang-Diaz, payload commander; and N. Jan Davis and Ronald M. Sega, mission specialists, along with Russian cosmonaut Sergei K. Krikalev, also a mission specialist.

Famed astronaut Neil A. Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the moon during the historic Apollo 11 space mission in July 1969, served for seven years as a research pilot at the NACA-NASA High-Speed Flight Station, now the Dryden Flight Research Center, at Edwards, California, before he entered the space program. Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA) at the Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (later NASA's Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, and today the Glenn Research Center) in 1955. Later that year, he transferred to the High-Speed Flight Station at Edwards as an aeronautical research scientist and then as a pilot, a position he held until becoming an astronaut in 1962. He was one of nine NASA astronauts in the second class to be chosen. As a research pilot Armstrong served as project pilot on the F-100A and F-100C aircraft, F-101, and the F-104A. He also flew the X-1B, X-5, F-105, F-106, B-47, KC-135, and Paresev. He left Dryden with a total of over 2450 flying hours. He was a member of the USAF-NASA Dyna-Soar Pilot Consultant Group before the Dyna-Soar project was cancelled, and studied X-20 Dyna-Soar approaches and abort maneuvers through use of the F-102A and F5D jet aircraft. Armstrong was actively engaged in both piloting and engineering aspects of the X-15 program from its inception. He completed the first flight in the aircraft equipped with a new flow-direction sensor (ball nose) and the initial flight in an X-15 equipped with a self-adaptive flight control system. He worked closely with designers and engineers in development of the adaptive system, and made seven flights in the rocket plane from December 1960 until July 1962. During those fights he reached a peak altitude of 207,500 feet in the X-15-3, and a speed of 3,989 mph (Mach 5.74) in the X-15-1. Armstrong has a total of 8 days and 14 hours in space, including 2 hours and 48 minutes walking on the Moon. In March 1966 he was commander of the Gemini 8 or

A Convair F-106B Delta Dart rolls to the right to reveal the two research engines installed under its wings by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center. Lewis acquired the aircraft in October of 1966 to study inlet and nozzle designs for the supersonic transport engine program. Two General Electric J85 engines were mounted beneath the F-106B’s wings and operated from Mach 1 to 1.5. The right wing always carried reference nozzle for which the performance was known. Six supersonic nozzle variations and two inlets were tested on the left engine. The designs had already been studied in the Lewis wind tunnels, but those tests were limited by shock waves in the tunnels. Most F-106B flights were flown in a 200-mile path over the lake between Buffalo and Sandusky, known as the Lake Erie Corridor. The 1100-mile-per-hour flight took only 11 minutes at an altitude of 30,000 feet. The aircraft almost always returned with a depleted fuel supply so a Visual Flight Rules operation was required. Following the crash of another jet fighter at Lewis in July 1969, the F-106s were stationed at Selfridge Air Force Base in Michigan. NASA pilots flew transport planes each morning to the base before commencing the F-106B missions. After the supersonic transport program was cancelled, the F-106B was used as a test bed for additional engine exhaust nozzle configurations. The F-106B was also used to test inlet configurations for the noise reduction program.

Data from NASA's ECOSTRESS (Ecosystem Spaceborne Thermal Radiometer Experiment on Space Station) instrument was used to map scorching pavement in Phoenix where contact with skin can cause serious burns. Based on measurements captured at 1:02 p.m. local time on June 19, 2024, the image shows land surface temperatures across a grid of roads and adjacent sidewalks, revealing how urban spaces can turn hazardous during hot weather. The Arizona city's miles of asphalt and concrete surfaces (colored here in yellow, red, and purple, based on temperature) trap heat, as the image indicates. The surfaces registered at least 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius) to the touch – hot enough to cause contact burns in minutes to seconds. At the lower right of the image is Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, where ECOSTRESS recorded some of the hottest land surface temperatures within the city – around 140 F (60 C). The air temperature on June 19 at the airport reached 106 F (43 C). Air temperature, which is measured out of direct sunlight, can differ significantly from the temperature at the land surface. Streets are often the hottest surfaces of the built environment due to dark asphalt paving that absorbs more sunlight than lighter-colored surfaces; asphalt absorbs up to 95% of solar radiation. These types of surfaces can easily be 40 to 60 degrees F (22 to 33 degrees C) hotter than the air temperature on a very hot day. Launched to the International Space Station in 2018, ECOSTRESS measures temperatures at the highest spatial resolution of any space-based instrument, producing images with a typical pixel size of about 225 feet (70 meters) by 125 feet (38 meters). The image of Phoenix was produced at higher spatial resolution using a machine learning algorithm that incorporates data from additional satellites: NASA/USGS Landsat and Sentinel-2. The combined measurements were used to "sharpen" the surface temperatures to a resolution of 100 feet (30 meters) by 100 feet (30 meters). https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA25529

Prometheus and Pandora are almost hidden in Saturn's rings in this image. Prometheus (53 miles or 86 kilometers across) and Pandora (50 miles or 81 kilometers across) orbit along side Saturn's narrow F ring, which is shaped, in part, by their gravitational influences help to shape that ring. Their proximity to the rings also means that they often lie on the same line of sight as the rings, sometimes making them difficult to spot. In this image, Prometheus is the left most moon in the ring plane, roughly in the center of the image. Pandora is towards the right. This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 0.3 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 6, 2015. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 994,000 miles (1.6 million kilometers) from Prometheus and at a Sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 106 degrees. Image scale is 6 miles (10 kilometers) per pixel. http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA18334

Pilot Earle Boyer and researcher Henry Brandhorst prepare for a solar cell calibration flight in a Martin B-57B Canberra at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Lewis Research Center. Lewis was in the early stages of decades-long energy conversion and space power research effort. Brandhorst, a member of the Chemistry and Energy Conversion Division, led a team of Lewis researchers in a quest to develop new power sources to sustain spacecraft in orbit. Solar cells proved to be an important source of energy, but researchers discovered that their behavior varied at different atmospheric levels. Their standardization and calibration were critical. Brandhorst initiated a standardized way to calibrate solar cells in the early 1960s using the B-57B aircraft. The pilots would take the aircraft up into the troposphere and open the solar cell to the sunlight. The aircraft would steadily descend while instruments recorded how much energy was being captured by the solar cell. From this data, Brandhorst could determine the estimated power for a particular solar cell at any altitude. Pilot Earle Boyer joined NASA Lewis in October 1962. He had flown Convair F-102 Delta Dagger fighters in the Air Force and served briefly in the National Guard before joining the Langley Research Center. Boyer was only at Langley a few months before he transferred to Cleveland. He flew the B-57B, a Convair F-106 Delta Dart, Gulfstream G-1 with an experimental turboprop, Learjet and many other aircraft over the next 32 years at Lewis.