Image: Airplane vortex edit

Description: Wake Vortex Study at Wallops Island The air flow from the wing of this agricultural plane is made visible by a technique that uses colored smoke rising from the ground. The swirl at the wingtip traces the aircraft's wake vortex, which exerts a powerful influence on the flow field behind the plane. Because of wake vortex, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires aircraft to maintain set distances behind each other when they land. A joint NASA-FAA program aimed at boosting airport capacity, however, is aimed at determining conditions under which planes may fly closer together. NASA researchers are studying wake vortex with a variety of tools, from supercomputers, to wind tunnels, to actual flight tests in research aircraft. Their goal is to fully understand the phenomenon, then use that knowledge to create an automated system that could predict changing wake vortex conditions at airports. Pilots already know, for example, that they have to worry less about wake vortex in rough weather because windy conditions cause them to dissipate more rapidly.
Title: Airplane vortex edit
Credit: This image or video was catalogued by Langley Research Center of the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) under Photo ID: EL-1996-00130 AND Alternate ID: L90-5919. This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information. Català | Čeština | Deutsch | English | Español | فارسی | Français | Galego | Magyar | Հայերեն | Bahasa Indonesia | Italiano | 日本語 | Македонски | മലയാളം | Polski | Português | Русский | Türkçe | 中文 | 中文（简体）‎ | +/−
Author: NASA Langley Research Center (NASA-LaRC), Edited by Fir0002
Permission: Public domain (see below)
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No