NASA WB-57

NASA

FILE – At Patrick Air Force Base in Cocoa Beach, Fla., the WB-57F aircraft taxis on the airfield before its test flight in July 2005.

A NASA research plane made a belly landing at Houston’s Ellington Airport on Tuesday morning after a mechanical issue, the space agency said.

According to Bethany Stevens, NASA’s press secretary, all crew members are safe after a WB-57 made a gear-up landing, meaning its landing gear was not fully deployed.

“As with any incident, a thorough investigation will be conducted by NASA into the cause,” she said in a post on X. “NASA will transparently update the public as we gather more information.”

Video shared by Houston’s CBS affiliate KHOU show the plane skidding along the runway as flames and smoke follow behind it.

The landing happened around 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, Jim Szczesniak, director of aviation for Houston Airports, said in a statement. He added that first responders with a military subcontractor were responding to the incident, and the runway would be closed until the aircraft could be removed.

Three WB-57s are operated by the Johnson Space Center and are based at Ellington Airport. The 72,000-pound plane is designed to travel for extended periods of time up to 63,000 feet in the air.

The WB-57’s entry on NASA’s aircraft list describes the plane as having been “flying research missions since the early 1970’s, and continue to be an asset to the scientific community with professional, reliable, customer-oriented service designed to meet all scientific objectives.”

The Johnson Space Center deferred to Stevens’ statement when asked about the incident and what the research plane was doing as it made the landing.