The world's biggest airborne laboratory, a NASA DC-8 aircraft, has arrived in the Philippines for the first leg of its 4-country mission around Asia. Its crew plans to collect air samples to study pollution.
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00:00 This isn't your ordinary NASA space mission.
00:03 It's the world's biggest flying laboratory operating in the skies of Asia to study air
00:08 pollution.
00:09 It's part of a team effort by the U.S., South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines,
00:14 with the NASA DC-8 aircraft making its first stop here in Manila.
00:25 The lab will fly at low altitude collecting air samples, which researchers say are crucial
00:30 to detecting pollutants and their origins.
00:33 "What we are wanting to do with this mission is understand all that is going on as it's
00:39 seen from space, as it's seen from the ground and this particular in-between layers that
00:45 in fact we need to understand in order to have policy and regulation that is evidence-based."
00:52 NASA has warned Manila residents that the jet may be seen and heard, but that there
00:57 would be no harm to the public, wildlife or infrastructure.
01:01 Researchers are confident this is just the start of the global effort, hoping to bring
01:05 in an even larger aircraft to fly over more countries, possibly also Taiwan, collecting
01:12 more evidence to convince policy makers to clean up our air.
01:16 John Su and Joy Sten for Taiwan Plus.
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