September 13, 2001: US Geological Survey and NASA Agree on Aerial Examination of Ground Zero Dust

Robert Green, head of the AVIRIS program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, informs Roger Clark, the astrophysicist who heads the US Geological Survey (USGS)‘s portion of the AVIRIS program in Denver, that NASA will permit the USGS team to use AVIRIS in an attempt to determine the chemical composition of the dust and debris that resulted from the collapse of the World Trade Center (see September 12, 2001). The crew will mount the unit to a de Havilland Twin Otter prop plane owned by NASA, which will make several passes over the WTC and surrounding area. “The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy… signed off on the flight. And the Air Force [has] agreed not to shoot the Twin Otter down,” the St. Louis Post-Dispatch will later report. [St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 2/10/2002]