The Canberra High Altitude Mission Platform

This paper presents the capabilities of two English Electric Aviation Canberra aircraft owned by High Altitude Mapping Missions, Inc. These aircraft are available for high altitude commercial, government, and scientific missions. The basic specifications of the Canberra are provided and compared to other high-performance jet aircraft falling into the same category. This paper describes the high altitude flight characteristics and mission capabilities of the Canberras. The aircraft are configured to conduct up to eight-hour flight operations with up to six hours at 50,000 feet altitude. Shorter missions can be conducted at higher altitudes. Potential missions include: IFSAR, magnetic field mapping, gravity field mapping, imaging (SAR, IR, & hyper-spectral), LIDAR, communications relay, dropsonde deployment, hybrid rocket launching, severe storm monitoring, and disaster monitoring. Canberra high altitude operations have minimal weather impact on missions, are free from flight constraints imposed by air traffic control, and can do large area coverage and long mission times