Ikhana Unmanned Aircraft System Western States Fire Missions by Peter W. Merlin

Author:Peter W. Merlin [Merlin, Peter W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NASA, Ikhana
Publisher: NASA
Published: 2010-08-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Four

After the Fire

The Ikhana Western States Fire Mission flights of 2007 and 2008 resulted in a number of significant accomplishments and lessons. Multiple government agencies and corporate entities worked together to develop the capabilities of a UAS for use as a disaster response tool.

With smoke from the Lake Arrowhead area fires streaming in the background, NASA’s Ikhana unmanned aircraft heads out on a wildfire-imaging mission.

NASA

WSFM accomplishments

The Western States UAS Fire Missions, carried out by team members from NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, the National Interagency Fire Center, NOAA, the FAA, and General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc., were a resounding success and a historic achievement in the field of unmanned aircraft technology.

In the first milestone of the project, NASA scientists developed improved imaging and communications processes for delivering near real-time information to firefighters. They realized that providing firefighters with critical information in a timely manner required an improvement in sensor technology as well as autonomous analysis and visualization tools that a NASA partnership could deliver. NASA’s Applied Sciences and Airborne Science programs and the Earth Science Technology Office developed the AMS-Wildfire sensor with the intent of demonstrating the capabilities during the WSFM and later transitioning those capabilities to operational agencies.

The WSFM project team repeatedly demonstrated the utility and flexibility of using a UAS as an effective tool to aid disaster response personnel through the employment of various platform, sensor, and data dissemination technologies related to improving near real-time wildfire observations and intelligence gathering techniques. Each successive flight expanded capabilities of the previous missions for platform endurance and range, number of observations made, and flexibility in mission and sensing reconfiguration.

Team members worked with the FAA to safely and efficiently integrate the unmanned aircraft system into the national airspace. NASA pilots flew the Ikhana in close coordination with FAA air traffic controllers, allowing the aircraft to maintain safe separation from other aircraft.

WSFM project personnel developed extensive contingency management plans to minimize the risk to the aircraft and the public, including the negotiation of emergency landing rights agreements at three government airfields and the identification and documentation of over 300 potential emergency landing sites in the event of an engine failure or other malfunction.

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