HUBBARDSTON — There’s some excitement in this small town with a population of 4,300 residents.
A low-flying plane has been heard — some have seen it — in the skies of this North Central Massachusetts community and other towns in the area, and people want to know what’s going on.
“Maybe they’re spying on us,” said Carla Perrault, which elicited a chuckle from Kathy Lestage when both took a smoke break from their jobs at the Hubbardston Market.
A few doors down at the Stars & Stripes Diner, employee Mary Krauss heard the plane where she lives in Templeton, a sound that made it seem like it was flying “super low.”
Customer Matt Shea didn’t just hear the plane; he saw it this week flying over his Hubbardston home. A former air defense artillery specialist in the U.S. Army — “I’m always watching for planes” — Shea thinks it could be skydivers out of Orange Municipal Airport.
‘Mowing the lawn’ in the sky
The plane is mapping the Earth for the United States Geological Survey, said Anjana Shah, a research geophysicist at the federal agency.
The single-engine Cessna Grand Caravan — Shah called it a geophysical survey airplane — has a pilot and copilot and generally flies at a speed of 90 knots, or 103 miles per hour.
An airplane doing mapping for the U.S. Geological Survey does a low pass over power lines and tree tops in Princeton Center on July 24.
Top speeds can occasionally reach 120 miles per hour, said Shah, and she compared the flight patterns to “mowing the lawn.” That means the plane travels east to west, turns around and then heads east, a back-and-forth route, just like a lawn mower. There’s a 750-foot width between each path.
Occasionally, the flights move north to south and repeat in that pattern, again like a lawn mower.
“We’re interested in understanding the geology of the region,” said Shah, including what is contained on the surface and beneath it. “We want to see through the trees and grass and vegetation. We want to see the rocks, what’s under the surface.”
Must fly low
To get the readings, the plane must fly low, a 300-foot altitude in some areas, according to a USGS press release. In more populated areas, it’s 1,000 feet.
The plane’s instruments measure the Earth’s magnetic field and naturally occurring low levels of radiation, said Shah. The information is used for various applications, including one that makes sense in Massachusetts where hundreds, maybe thousands, of homes have crumbling foundations because of an iron sulfide called pyrrhotite.
It’s naturally found in stone and when it’s mixed with concrete and used in home foundations, there can be trouble because air and water cause the pyrrhotite to expand, leading to cracks in the foundation.
Flight data provided by the website Flightrader24.com shows the path of an airplane doing mapping for the U.S. Geological Survey on July 4.
The Cessna’s trips over Hubbardston and other parts of Massachusetts will lead to mapping where the pyrrhotite is located, so future buildings can avoid the material in their foundations.
Planes are ‘passive’
Shah noted the plane’s instruments are “completely passive,” meaning they don’t send out electricity or anything harmful as they measure what’s on the Earth’s surface and below.
Stars & Stripes Diner co-owner Eran Tucker, right, with customer Matt Shea in Hubbardston July 23.
She also said no photographs are taken, in order to safeguard a community’s privacy. Along the lines of privacy, Shah mentioned the gathered data is nothing like satellites that can zoom in to granular details of a home or business. The data the USGS plane accumulates is pixilated on a much larger scale of a half mile or mile, said Shah.
Meanwhile, all flying is done during daylight, and the USGS hires companies with well-trained pilots, said Shah. In the case of the Cessna that is based in Keane, New Hampshire, the agency contracted with Xcaliber Smart Mapping, based in Spain.
The flights started a month ago, north of Keene. The mowing-the-lawn routes will continue south, until they reach New Haven, Connecticut. The whole job should be done by late fall or early winter.
Hubbardston and nearby communities will probably see the plane in their skies for a few more days, said Shah.
When will Worcester see the plane?
Worcester residents should see the Cessna flying overhead sometime in the next month, said Shah. She couldn’t pinpoint the exact days because it depends on the weather. Conditions like heavy rainstorms and fog ground the plane.
Besides parts of Massachusetts, flights will cover areas of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont. Plus, a tiny sliver of Rhode Island.
The 1970s was the last time the USGS did this kind of mapping in Massachusetts, said Shah. A big difference, she said, is today’s data is high resolution imagery that wasn’t available in the 1970s.
When the project is finished, it will take a year to analyze the data before it’s put on the USGS website so the public can see it for free. Meanwhile, the USGS will try its best to inform the public before its survey planes hit the skies, said Shah, but it’s not possible to reach everyone.
As social media tends to do, some engage is interesting theories when it comes to the low-flying plane over North Central Worcester County. On the Ashburnham Police Department’s Facebook page that informed the public about the mapping, one comment said the government is dropping weaponized ticks and mosquitoes to spread disease. Another said, “More BIG BROTHER nonsense.”
Plane comes with some fun
Kelly Hansen of Ashburnham knew about the USGS mapping but couldn’t resist some levity while enjoying the sunshine at Asnacomet Pond Beach in Hubbardston. “Are they drones, getting ready to do something to us?” she asked with a smile.
Kelly Hansen at Asnacomet Pond Beach in Hubbardston July 23.
At the Hubbardston Fire Department, Taylor Wilkinson, a firefighter paramedic who grew up in town, said the low-flying plane is nothing new, because military planes have conducted low-altitude training exercises for years over Hubbardston.
In his office next door, Chief Robert Hayes, who has lived in town for over 40 years, said he caught a glimpse of the plane this week.
That prompted Leeanne Moses, a town employee, to say she also saw it flying low this week. She remembers the plane having an orange color, but Hayes said it was more of a military gray.
“I saw the plane out of the corner of my eye,” said Hayes. “It was low and fast, and then it was gone.”
Contact Henry Schwan at henry.schwan@telegram.com. Follow him on X: @henrytelegram
This article originally appeared on Telegram & Gazette: Low-flying plane in Central Mass is conducting USGS survey