Mike Wusk, left, chats with Dick Trail at the McCook Regional Airport. (Bruce Crosby/McCook Daily Gazette) [Click to enlarge]

Twenty five years after Dick Trail of McCook taught him to fly, Mike Wusk prepared to leave McCook with three other members of his NASA atmospheric study crew this morning on their way back to Virginia from Alaska.

Their plane is equipped with downward looking Lidar (light detection and ranging) laser, coupled with a telescope, to study pollution from the Pacific Rim and Europe that collects as a brown haze over the Arctic.

The data is then coordinated from other planes taking air samples at lower levels, as well as satellites as part of the ARCTAS study program.

The Wusk and Trail families met in Michigan, where Mike's father was commander of a fighter squadron and Dick was a tanker squadron commander.

Later, after Dick retired, Mike spent a summer working on Trail's farm and learning to fly.

Mike's wife is a rocket scientist for NASA, working on a suborbital project doing research for the Space Shuttle replacement.

They have three children.

ARCTAS home page:

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http://www.espo.nasa.gov/arctas/