I heard back from the county. Although they contract for aerial photography, this project is not theirs.
They confirmed, like many of you have said, such photos and LiDAR projects are commonly done for a variety of purposes, customers or for potential sale to future customers.
Maybe we’re getting new photogrammetry for the an upcoming World Update! 
I assume that was under autopilot. Those are very regular lines. How would they set that up do you think? The loops at each end don’t seem as precise so perhaps they hand fly those bits.
It’s a Short Sunderland looking for German u-boats.
If they keep going south of that area, they may find the U505.
I’ve seen that on Flightradar24 too. It must get dull for the pilots but probably a good job to build up the hours.
Starting a rumor that MSFS2024 is going to have new Chicago photogrammetry.
Edit: Rather surprisingly, they overflew KORD during normal operations. KMDW wasn’t so accommodating.
Isn’t it obvious?
They’re producing the next level of photographic detail for a future world update of MSFS. 
Using a different plane now but still based out of Aurora.
I wish I had captured the full flight on that near perfect circle. For some reason FR24 didn’t have the registration number so I can’t go back and find it.
The center of the circle was KPMP. I can’t figure out what it was doing other than video monitoring or perhaps doing a communications relay? They had to have been on GPS to keep it that tight.
Although I’m not sure if that was real as I’ve seen some bizarre flight data on FR24.
That’s some accurate flying. The more I watch the different flight tracking sites I use, the more I wonder what some of them are doing. I found that when FR24 has information blocked/not showing, I sometimes find it on https://globe.adsbexchange.com
I’ve wondered if they are even blocked?
For some reason I frequently see PA-18s without registrations. But they show on adsb exchange.
This looks like the same type flight NASA was doing last summer in that area.
Yeah, that was the (crazy) low level DC-8 doing atmospheric research. This was a twin engine piston at a higher altitude probably taking pictures for Jorg 
