{"id":141196,"date":"2026-01-28T14:04:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:04:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/141196\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T14:04:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T14:04:11","slug":"nasa-plane-makes-fiery-belly-landing-at-houston-airfield-the-mercury-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/141196\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA plane makes fiery belly landing at Houston airfield \u2013 The Mercury News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The two-person crew of a NASA plane is safe after the aircraft\u2019s landing gear failed, leading to a fiery belly landing at a Houston airfield<\/a>\u00a0on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the incident occurred around 11:25 a.m. at Ellington Airport when a Martin WB-57<\/a>, a high-altitude research plane, experienced the mechanical issue as it touched down.<\/p>\n

The aircraft then slid down the runway with smoke and flames spewing out before coming to a stop, as seen in local news footage<\/a> from CBS affiliate KHOU.<\/p>\n

\u201cResponse to the incident is ongoing, and all crew are safe at this time<\/a>,\u201d said NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens.<\/p>\n

The space agency did not say how or why the landing gear failed, but promised a\u00a0thorough investigation and transparent updates to the public.<\/p>\n

The runway was closed until the plane could be removed.<\/p>\n

The WB-57<\/a> is capable of reaching altitudes above 63,000 feet and can reach speeds of about 410 knots (472 mph). It\u2019s operated by a pilot and sensor equipment technician, and is used to conduct scientific and atmospheric research missions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aircraft have been flying research missions since the early 1970s, and continue to be an asset to the scientific community with professional, reliable, customer-oriented service designed to meet all scientific objectives,\u201d according to a NASA website.<\/p>\n

The plane involved in Tuesday\u2019s close call is based at NASA Johnson Space Center<\/a> in Houston, but NASA keeps many of its aircraft at Ellington Airport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two-person crew of a NASA plane is safe after the aircraft\u2019s landing gear failed, leading to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141072,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[492,59484,56,58,57,3607,16611,1911,2631,223,2220,3951,840],"class_list":["post-141196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-accidents","tag-air-crash","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-latest-headlines","tag-morning-wire","tag-nasa","tag-national-news","tag-news","tag-science","tag-space","tag-transportation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141072"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}