Posted on 10/25/2007 12:25:40 PM PDT by BenLurkin
EDWARDS AFB - In response to a request from the state Office of Emergency Services and the National Interagency Fire Center, NASA on Wednesday sent an aircraft equipped with sophisticated infrared imaging equipment to assist firefighters battling several of the Southern California wildfires. The Ikhana unmanned aircraft system, a Predator B modified for civil science and research missions, was launched at 8:45 a.m. Wednesday from its base at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. It is expected to fly over the major blazes burning in the Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs areas and possibly down into San Diego County to provide images of wildfires raging in that area.
The aircraft is guided remotely by pilots in a ground control station at NASA Dryden.
The Ikhana is carrying the Autonomous Modular Scanner, a thermal-infrared imaging system developed at NASA's Ames Research Center in Northern California. The system is capable of peering through heavy smoke and darkness to see hot spots, flames and temperature differences, processing the imagery, then transmitting that information in near-real time so it can aid fire incident commanders in allocating their firefighting resources.
The images are transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames, where the imagery is placed on an Ames Web site, combined with Google Earth maps, then transmitted to the interagency fire center in Boise, Idaho, where it then is made available to incident commanders in the field.
The system was validated recently during a series of wildfire imaging demonstration missions conducted by NASA and the U.S. Forest Service in August and September.
Each flight is coordinated with the FAA to allow the remotely piloted aircraft to fly within the national airspace while maintaining separation from other aircraft.
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
Thought this might interest you for your ping lists.
Beautiful!
Awesome technology.
This article just makes me want one of these aircraft. I wonder if I could put it on layaway...
Thanks.
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