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Description of Driving Event:

Since 1960, the NASA Langley Team has flown a NASA-owned F-106B airplane through thunderstorms about 1500 times at altitudes between 5000 and 40000 feet (1500 to 12000 meters). The airplane, lightning-hardened and outfitted with special instruments, was hit by lightning 714 times. Ground-based NASA RADARs located across the Chesapeake Bay on Wallops Island, Va., Were used to guide the airplane into the upper, and most electrically active, regions of thunderstorms. Considerable attention was paid to protecting the crew during these potentially dangerous missions.

When lightning strikes an airplane, it may take more than a second before the extremely fast and interactive electromagnetic effects die away. Currents between 10000 and 200000 amperes may flow through the airplane's metal skin, setting up electromagnetic fields that may propagate into the airplane's interior through open apertures, diffusion, or other mechanisms.

Among other significant findings, this research produced data that was the first to actually capture an airplane in the act of triggering a lightning flash.