The Tricked-Out Research Planes That Fly Through Wildfires
The only way to know exactly what’s in a wildfire’s smoke is to sample straight from the haze. So during the Rim Fire in Yosemite—which emitted so much smoke it formed its own clouds—a NASA DC-8 passenger plane and an Alpha fighter jet each crisscrossed through the plume. On both planes, scientists had created an in-flight lab to measure exactly what the fire was producing.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-tricked-out-research-planes-that-fly-through-wildfires/