When Nasa used Hong Kong for an international mission to study the greenhouse effect: it wasn’t rocket science, but it was important
- A laboratory in a Nasa-designed plane flew over the Pacific Ocean in 1991 for scientists to monitor the ozone layer and the effects of greenhouse gases
- Nasa decided to base the mission in Hong Kong because of its convenient location, and the mission lasted six days
“Hong Kong is being considered as the base for an international mission to study the ‘greenhouse effect’ and the destruction of the ozone layer above the Pacific Ocean,” the South China Morning Post reported on April 27, 1989.
For the mission, a special Nasa-designed aeroplane was to act as a flying laboratory, to monitor the effect of greenhouse gases on Earth’s atmosphere.
“We must understand the sources of these gases and how they react in the lower atmosphere. Only then can we predict accurately whether the Earth will become [excessively] heated. These are the processes which affect the habitability of the globe,” said Dr Robert McNeal of Nasa, who later became the manager of the international project.
Nasa chose the Pacific region to carry out the study because it was one of the cleanest parts of the world, while Hong Kong was picked as the base for the laboratory aeroplane because of its convenient location, according to the news report.
More than two years later, on October 3, 1991, the Post reported that the team from Nasa had arrived in Hong Kong to launch a “$46 million mission”. The lab plane would “carry more than 70 scientists on two flights over the western part of the ocean as part of a worldwide project to determine pollution levels in the atmosphere,” the article read. “In particular, they want to see which pollutants are being exported from Asia to the Pacific.”
