Pietersburg now known as Polokwane in the Limpopo Province, An advance team from the American space agency NASA and the first of seven research planes arrived at the Pietersburg International Airport in preparation for the SAFARI 2000 science initiative to monitor the earth’s environment and atmosphere.

Airport corporate relations the then manager Howard Khosa said the Washington University Convair 580 transport plane that arrived, is expected to be joined by two more hi-tech research planes on that week the aircraft took part in the survey and the famous cold war U2 spy plane,was also part of the survey fleet of aircraft.

The NASA U2 Spy planes also made a series of low level passes at the then DEXSA International Airshow at Waterkloof in that very same year of 2000.

Safari 2000 used the U2, officially the ER2 high-altitude surveillance aircraft, as its main tool to monitor the relationships between antopogenic (the influence of topography on atmospheric conditions), physical and biological processes that create the land and atmospheric systems of the sub-continent.

The study is intended to set international scientific standards for measuring atmospheric pollution, global warming and ecological processes and will include the ecology of the Kruger National Park and cloud physics off the Namibian coast.

The NASA programme is was Pietersburg’s first big commercial project since the airport was commercialised in a 50-year, R5-billion concession to a Malaysian consortium.

There was also a C-141B Starlifter as additional support aircraft. But it and the KC-135R returned to the States the following day.