NASA’s Centennial Challenges programme office has launched a competition to design and build an autonomously operating air vehicle to fly a roller-coaster flightpath only using visual navigation systems.
The $250,000 Planetary Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Challenge will begin October 2007. There can be no use of GPS technology and the vehicle must be able to extend and retract a probe to precisely hit multiple ground targets.
“Mars and Saturn’s satellite, Titan, are prime candidates for the types of vehicles that will compete,“ says NASA’s associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Scott Horowitz.
Source: Flight International
