A prototype for future PC-based unmanned air vehicle ground control stations developed for NASA's two Northrop Grumman Global Hawks is also a cause for the five-month delay of the UAV's first flight.
Expected to fly on 17 September, the flight campaign was originally to have begun in the second week of May to demonstrate the control station and the Global Hawk's capabilities. For airborne science NASA will fly its two Global Hawks, initially in the Pacific.
Developed by Northrop, the PC-based station uses internet protocols to enable a more open architecture for the integration of the science payloads NASA wants. Stations will be based at NASA's Global Hawk Operational Center where pilots and scientists sit together to operate the UAVs. A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pilot advised Northrop on the station's development.
"We are using a new ground control station and the integration testing with the aircraft required more time than originally estimated," says NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Global Hawk project manager Chris Naftel.
He says other issues also contributed to the five-month delay, but now all the ground testing is finished and a high-speed taxi test was completed on 10 September.
In 2008 NASA took ownership of two US Air Force, Defense Advanced Research Projects advanced concept technology demonstration Global Hawks, known as Air Vehicle One (AV1) and Air Vehicle Six (AV6). It is AV6 that will fly first despite it requiring more work than AV1, which was already fully instrumented for flight envelope testing.
But both needed to be made Iridium compatibility as NASA will use that telecommunications network with the UAVs.
Source: Flight International
