The US Congress has directed NASA to develop small unmanned air vehicles that would operate in remote areas in its Authorisation Act for the space and aeronautics agency that was signed into law on 15 October by president George Bush.
The small UAV work for remote area operations will be a collaborative effort with academia, as the Act says: "The administrator may enter into co-operative agreements with universities with UAV programmes."
NASA already operates a modified General Atomics MQ-9 Predator B called Altair for atmospheric science and will deploy two Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawks next year.
The Predator and Global Hawk are medium- and high-altitude class UAVs respectively while examples of small UAVs are the hand launched Aerovironment Raven and the Israeli Aeronautics Defense Systems Orbiter.
The agency is also being directed to "continue to utilise the capabilities of [UAVs] as appropriate in support of NASA and inter-agency co-operative missions." It has already worked with the US government's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on environmental monitoring using the Altair.
While NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center will use the Global Hawks for missions supporting the agency's science mission directorate where high-altitude, long-endurance, long-distance airborne capabilities are needed.
Source: Flight International
