NASA aeronautics research tests new wildfire detection tool

NASA researcher Mike Logan plans to use this small unmanned aerial vehicle to check for fires at a Virginia-North Carolina wildlife refuge as part of an agreement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

Credit: NASA Langley/David C. Bowman

NASA's research in unmanned aerial systems (UAS) may soon provide a means for early detection and mitigation of fires in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge, a nearly 50,000-square-acre region centered on the Virginia-North Carolina border.

NASA's Langley Research Center, in nearby Hampton, Virginia, has signed a one-year agreement with the Department of the Interior's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) to test small UASs for the detection of brush and forest fires.

The research is part of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate's UAS Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) project.

"The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is evaluating the feasibility of airborne unmanned platforms and their ability to offer a safer and more cost-effective alternative for surveillance of potential areas of interest immediately following thunderstorm activity," said Great Dismal Swamp Refuge Manager Chris Lowie.

"The agency hopes to see a significant decrease in cost to survey the Great Dismal Swamp, as well as a reduction in time to detect nascent fires, which could potentially save millions of dollars to the taxpayer in firefighting costs," added Lowie.

Mike Logan, the research lead at Langley, came up with the idea after a forest fire in 2011 that lasted almost four months and cost more than $10 million to extinguish.

Smoke from that fire, which was caused by a lightning strike, traveled as far north as Maryland only three years after another $10-million blaze in 2008, according to FWS.

"I made a phone call to the local fire captain after days of inhaling peat bog smoke," said Logan. "I learned most fires are caused by lightning strikes and the only way they can spot them is by hiring an aircraft to do an aerial survey of the huge swamp. So I figured why not use a UAV as a fire detector?"

After approval from the Federal Aviation Administration, the team at Langley plans to fly a lightweight UAS equipped with cameras and transmitters over the wildlife refuge.

"One is an out-of-the-nose camera that can see smoke plumes as they are rising," Logan explained.

"The other is an infrared camera housed in the body of the plane that points down. It can find hot spots by detecting heat signatures."

Although the aircraft can fly as fast as 40 miles an hour, when used in this capacity it will be flown slower while it transmits video, allowing individuals on the ground to observe what is occurring in the live video.

The transmissions can be viewed on a laptop computer in a mobile ground station.

Logan says the drone, which weighs about 15 pounds and has an almost six-foot wingspan, has a range of about eight miles and can stay aloft as long as an hour, before the batteries need recharging.

The aircraft also can be programmed to fly on its own, but a safety pilot will monitor operations during the tests.

"This kind of application for unmanned aerial systems shows just one public benefit," said Dave Hinton, Langley associate director for UAS technologies and applications.

"They can be used to detect fires or locate people who are lost."

NASA aeronautics makes strides to bring back supersonic passenger travel

NASA F/A-18 mission support aircraft were used to create low-intensity sonic booms during a resaerch project at the agency's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. 

The Waveforms and Sonic boom Perception and Response (WSPR), project gathered data from a select group of more than 100 volunteer Edwards Air Force Base residents on their individual attitudes toward sonic booms produced by aircraft in supersonic flight over Edwards. 

Credit: NASA/Jim Ross

The return of supersonic passenger travel may be coming closer to reality thanks to NASA's efforts to define a new standard for low sonic booms.

Several NASA aeronautics researchers will present their work in Atlanta this week at Aviation 2014, an annual event of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

They will share with the global aviation community the progress they are making in overcoming some of the biggest hurdles to supersonic passenger travel.

The research generates data crucial for developing a low-boom standard for the civil aviation industry.

NASA works closely with the Federal Aviation Administration and the international aerospace community, including the International Civil Aviation Organization, to gather data and develop new procedures and requirements that may help in a reconsideration of the current ban on supersonic flight over land.

"Lessening sonic booms, shock waves caused by an aircraft flying faster than the speed of sound, is the most significant hurdle to reintroducing commercial supersonic flight," said Peter Coen, head of the High Speed Project in NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate at the agency's Headquarters in Washington.

"Other barriers include high altitude emissions, fuel efficiency and community noise around airports."

Engineers at NASA centers in California, Ohio and Virginia that conduct aviation research are tackling sonic booms from a number of angles, including how to design a low-boom aircraft and characterize the noise.

NASA researchers have studied how to quantify the loudness and annoyance of the boom by asking people to listen to the sounds in a specially designed noise test chamber.

A recent flight research campaign at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, had residents explore ways to assess the public's response to sonic booms in a real-world setting.

Researchers at Armstrong have an advantage, pilots are permitted to fly at supersonic speeds because the facility is located on Edwards Air Force Base.

"People here are more familiar with sonic booms," said Armstrong aerospace engineer Larry Cliatt. "Eventually, we want to take this to a broader level of people who have never heard a sonic boom."

Similar work is conducted at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where volunteers from the local community rated sonic booms according to how disruptive they determined the sound to be.

"They each listened to a total of 140 sounds, and based on their average response, we can begin to estimate the general public's reactions," explained Langley acoustics engineer Alexandra Loubeau.

She also conducted a study at Langley comparing results from tools used to predict sonic boom noise at ground-level.

"Because of the interaction with the atmosphere, it is important to be as consistent as possible in the implementation and usage of these tools."

"The comparisons done so far have shown good agreement, but there are some inconsistencies that need to be studied," Loubeau said.

Other studies are focused on predicting the sonic boom and on design approaches to reducing it. Participants from Japan, the United States and France attended the first Sonic Boom Prediction Workshop, where they evaluated simple configurations, cylindrical bodies with and without wings—and complex full aircraft designs.

"We are working to understand the worldwide state of the art in predicting sonic booms from an aircraft point of view," said Mike Park, a fluid mechanics engineer at Langley.

"We found for simple configurations we can analyze and predict sonic booms extremely well. For complex configurations we still have some work to do."

RAF Tornado livery marks 100 years of Squadron

The new painted tail of a II (AC) Squadron Tornado revealed at RAF Marham

[Picture: Senior Aircraftman Andy Masson]

Number II (AC) Squadron, based at RAF Marham in Norfolk, were formed as a squadron in the Royal Flying Corps at Farnborough on 13 May 1912.

To mark the anniversary a GR4 aircraft has been painted with tail livery that depicts the iconic Bristol Scout aircraft with which the Squadron was equipped during the First World War.

The Squadron badge features a distinctive 'Wake' knot in the centre roundel, derived from Hereward The Wake, the 11th Century folk hero who led opposition to William the Conqueror in the Fens, and which indicates the basic role of the unit as a guardian of the Army.

The roundel is also shown on the fuselage next to the equally distinctive Squadron insignia of the white "triangle, circle, triangle", this having been the recognition symbol used by the Squadron during their service above the Western Front during the First World War.

RAF Marham Station Commander, Group Captain Cooper, stated:

"This is a fitting tribute to 'Shiny Two' and a demonstration of the skills of our Spray and Finishing bay. Royal Air Force Marham personnel look forward to sharing in Number II (Army Cooperation) Squadron's celebrations this year alongside those of 3 Squadron, who enjoy a similar, significant anniversary.

"The potent capabilities of the Tornado and Typhoon could not have been imagined by those early aviators and these events mark an notable occasion in the Royal Air Force's history."

The Squadron will receive their new Standard on 11 May 2012, a significant and historic event which precedes a weekend of celebratory activities, culminating a Service of Dedication in Ely Cathedral on 13 May.

Space Suits: This Year's Look is Skinny

After saying goodbye to the space shuttle program, NASA decided to ditch its big, bulky space suits for something slimmer.

The new exhibit "Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration" at the American Museum of Natural History in New York showcases the next generation of spacesuit made from spandex, nylon and a new patented polymer.

The exhibit opens Saturday. The BioSuit uses elastic cords running though the clothing made of nylon-spandex, elastic or urethane-painted foam to cover the entire body.

The BioSuit also relies on mechanical pressure rather than pressurized gas to protect the astronaut. The patented polymer material in the space suit replaces the compressed air of older suits.

The space-age material is more lightweight and more maneuverable than traditional spacesuits, NASA officials said.

More importantly, a small tear in the suit would only affect one area and wouldn't cause a deadly decompression accident. The helmet would be the only part of the suit that would need to be pressurised.

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology designed the BioSuit. Dava Newman, MIT professor of aeronautics and lead of the project, said the BioSuit was designed for astronauts working in planetary environments like those of the Moon or Mars where walking will be a key requirement.

"We really must design for greater mobility and enhanced human and robotic capability," Newman said. "It's a whole different ballgame when we go to the Moon or Mars, and we have to go back to walking and running or loping."

The MIT team has already made models of the suit that provide up to 30 kilopascals of pressure but they say it will take another 10 years of testing to produce a suit that could be used on actual space missions.

Global Hawk UAV: Smart Drone Set to Replace U-2 Spy Plane

The Air Force's Global Hawk surveillance plane at Northrop Grumman in Palmdale, Calif. Five will be built this year.

Work tables surround a handful of fuselages, and an unusually long wing, needed to slip through the thin air at 60,000 feet, is ready to be bolted into place.

Open panels await controls for cameras and eavesdropping gear, and bright blue tool bins and parts vats are scattered around the concrete floor.

Just 50 people work in the factory and a test hangar, and only five of the drones will be built this year. But despite a spate of delays, second-guessing and cost overruns, the Global Hawk is once again on track to replace one of America’s most noted aircraft: the U-2 spy plane, famed for its role in the cold war and more recently Afghanistan.

The Air Force decided last month to stick with its $12 billion Global Hawk program, betting that the unmanned drone can replicate the aging U-2’s ability to sweep up a broad mix of intelligence from commanding heights, and do it more safely and for much longer stretches than the piloted U-2.

The Navy is also onboard, with plans to spend $11 billion on a version that could patrol vast ocean areas.

The continued push for the Global Hawk reflects how drones are changing warfare and how critical high-altitude spying can be in any type of fight.

Still, the program remains ensnared in military politics and budget battles, and the aircraft itself awaits some important technical changes that could slow its unveiling.

In particular, creating the new models and their high-tech sensors, which can cost more than the planes, has been difficult.

And in an era in which remotely piloted planes are seen as relatively cheap and easy solutions, the Global Hawk has become the Escalade of drones, the gold-plated one that nearly broke the bank.

“The Global Hawk is a very impressive product, but it is also a very expensive product,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group, a consultancy in Fairfax, Va. “Those U-2s were paid for a long time ago.”

TED: A robot that flies like a bird

Plenty of robots can fly -- but none can fly like a real bird. That is, until Markus Fischer and his team at Festo built SmartBird, a large, lightweight robot, modeled on a seagull, that flies by flapping its wings. A soaring demo fresh from TEDGlobal 2011.

Airbus and DLR testing fuel cell technology to cut aircraft pollution and noise emissions

The goals of the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent, NOx emissions by 80 percent and noise cut by 50 percent by 2020 has seen aircraft manufacturers and airlines looking at alternative fuels such as biofuel.

While not feasible for powering the flight of the aircraft itself, Airbus has also been looking at the potential for fuel cell technology to power a number of aircraft functions, such as autonomous taxiing.

In 2008, Airbus, together with its research partner the German Aerospace Center (DLR), performed the first successful flight test of fuel cell technology where a fuel cell system provided power for the aircraft's back-up systems.

Airbus and DLR are now looking at the potential of fuel cell technology for powering other aircraft functions including autonomous taxiing.

A DLR designed technology demonstrator has been installed in a DLR owned A320 ATRA (Advanced Technology Research Aircraft) consisting of a fuel cell system powering two electric motors built into the rims of the aircraft nose wheel.

The 47-ton aircraft taxied around Hamburg Finkenwerder Airport propelled by an electric nose wheel on July 1st, 2011.

DLR says that an airliner fitted with a fuel cell-powered nose wheel would be able to move from its stand to the end of the runway without using its engines, thus allowing emissions produced in airports to be cut by up to roughly 18 percent and the noise during taxiing to be almost eliminated completely.

Although DLR is still working on detailed models of the potential savings at airports, Thorsten Mulhouse from the DLR Institute of Flight Guidance (Institut für Flugführung) says, "the potential saving at Frankfurt Airport from the use of electrically-driven nose wheels for Airbus A320 class aircraft is about 44 tons of kerosene per day."

Airbus and DLR testing fuel cell technology to cut aircraft pollution and noise emissions

Xenon Ion Thruster: Aerojet, EADS, QinetiQ,

Aerojet, a GenCorp (NYSE: GY) company, QinetiQ, (LSE: QQ.L) and EADS Astrium Crisa, an EADS (PAR:EAD) company, announced today that the companies have entered into a joint agreement to supply the XENITH™ (Xenon Ion Thruster) ion propulsion system to the worldwide commercial spacecraft market.

The agreement will enable customers to benefit from the combined expertise of independent market leaders in design, manufacture and supply of space propulsion systems, who are collaborating to deliver the XENITH™ system.

Built around the ultra high-efficient T6 ion thruster developed by QinetiQ, the XENITH™ propulsion system will provide a reduction in propellant consumed by more than a factor of 12 over conventional chemical propulsion systems.

Ion propulsion systems have been used for orbit raising and station keeping of satellites, as well as for primary propulsion for deep space missions.

The T6 ion propulsion technology is based on the lower power T5 system, which provides precision atmospheric drag compensation for the highly successful GOCE gravity mapping mission operated by ESA.

A T6-based propulsion system is being qualified for the European Bepi-Colombo mission to Mercury and has been selected to provide onboard propulsion for the Alphabus communications satellite platform.

QinetiQ provides the thruster and flow control subsystem, while Crisa provides the thruster power and control electronics.

"The joint effort with Aerojet and Crisa to market the XENITH™ propulsion system is a significant step toward delivering QinetiQ's proven ion propulsion technology for much wider use worldwide," said Neil Bevan, QinetiQ Technology Solutions, Managing Director of Aerospace.

Aerojet's electric propulsion products are currently flying on more than 150 operational satellites and span a broad range of electric propulsion products.

For the XENITH™ system, Aerojet will perform some of the manufacturing, under a licensed arrangement with QinetiQ, and then integrate and deliver the system to spacecraft primes.

Vice President of Space and Launch Systems for Aerojet, Julie Van Kleeck, states that "the XENITH™ system fills a critical need within Aerojet's suite of electric propulsion product offerings."

"As the developer and supplier of the T5 and T6 power electronics units, we look forward to working with this team to provide this key component of the XENITH™ system with the highest of quality and reliability," said Fernando del Rey, CEO of Crisa.

Crisa has provided flight electronics to most ESA flight programs and delivered more than 700 units with almost 3,000 aggregate years of operation on orbit.

About Aerojet
Aerojet is a world-recognized aerospace and defense leader principally serving the missile and space propulsion, defense and armaments markets.

GenCorp is a leading technology-based manufacturer of aerospace and defense products and systems with a real estate segment that includes activities related to the entitlement, sale, and leasing of the company's excess real estate assets.

Additional information about Aerojet and GenCorp can be obtained by visiting the companies' websites at http://www.Aerojet.com and http://www.GenCorp.com.

About QinetiQ Group
A FTSE250 company, QinetiQ uses its domain knowledge to provide technical support and know-how to customers in the global aerospace, defence and security markets.

Employing 13,000 people around the world, QinetiQ's unique position enables it to be a trusted partner to government organisations, predominantly in the UK and the US, including defence departments, intelligence services and security agencies.

In the year to 31 March 2011, QinetiQ delivered revenue of 1,702.6 m pounds Sterling.

About EADS Astrium Crisa
A fully owned company of EADS Astrium in Spain, Crisa is a well renowned supplier of complex on board electronics for space.

More than 25 years experience, 400 employees, and hundreds of electronic units flown in space, demonstrate Crisa's capabilities in the design and manufacturing of electronic equipment for satellites and launchers, covering every scientific, Earth observation, telecommunications or navigation application.

At the moment, the company is working in the Ariane 5 and Vega launcher programs, the ATV vehicle, the Alphabus and Eurostar platforms, scientific and Earth observation satellites like GAIA, LISA Pathfinder, Sentinel 2 & 3, EarthCARE, and the planetary mission Bepi-Colombo.

XENITH is a trade mark of QinetiQ Limited.

SOURCE Aerojet

Twin-engined "Cri-Cri" at Paris Air Show 2011

Pilot Hugues Duval sits in his twin-engined "Cri-Cri", one of the smallest aerobatic aircraft in the world, in front of a Boeing 747-8FA.

Duval holds the world speed record for an electrically powered aircraft after reaching a top speed of 262 km/h.

Read the spec on this mini aerobatic aircraft here

You can also read more about this amazing aircraft on the Cri-Cri blog

Variable-wing prototype points to the future of UAVs

The role of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has expanded rapidly in both military and civilian circles over the past decade and although most designs to date are miniature versions of conventional aircraft, we can expect to see much more radical examples emerge in the near future.


In developing this next-generation of UAVs scientist are looking to go beyond the limitations of fixed wing and rotary wing aircraft and to do it, they are turning to nature's ultimate flying machines - birds.

We've already seen seen flapping-wing micro-aircraft, robotic seagulls and even a design based on a pterodactyl. Engineers at UC San Diego are furthering this approach with research into variable-wing techniques that could result in a bird-like UAV capable of spot landing.

The ultimate goal of the UC researchers is to create a UAV that can both cruise efficiently like a fixed wing aircraft and land on a perch. To achieve this they are studying the wing morphing and flapping techniques used by birds.

"One of the key behaviors observed in the birds was their use of wing sweep for pitch control in both forward flight and stalled landing approaches," she UC graduate student Kim Wright. "Birds can move their wings in a myriad of ways, providing a level of aerodynamic control that is unmatched by UAVs."

A team led by Wight and mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Tom Bewley analyzed in the movement of birds like barn owls and hawks in slow motion to investigate how wing morphing and flapping can be used for spot landing.

The result is a a small remote controlled UAV made primarily from balsa wood, fiberglass and foam like a standard RC hobby plane. Carbon fiber was used for the wings and variable wing sweep was achieved by introducing carbon fiber tubing for the shoulder joint structure.

The researchers have tested the plane using computer modeling and report that this has validated the concept of using wing sweep for pitch control of the aircraft. The next step is to combine wing twist, flapping or other wing morphing approaches to achieve autonomous perching.

"Combining these aspects into a fully actuated, intelligent UAV would be the ultimate goal,' said Wright. "A small UAV that could maneuver and land like a bird would be a valuable tool for surveillance and search and rescue. This project has brought the aerospace community a small step closer to that goal."

DLR Measures Owl Wing Shape in Flight

The flight of birds is still largely unexplored; in particular, the movements performed during the beat of a wing and the airflow around the wing remain a puzzle to scientists.

The German Aerospace Center (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt; DLR), in collaboration with RWTH Aachen University (Rheinisch-Westfälische Technische Hochschule Aachen) and the German Armed Forces University in Munich (Universität der Bundeswehr München) is addressing this question.

Starting on 26 April 2011, the scientists will be photographing the wings of an owl while in flight inside a closed room at RTWH Aachen University to obtain information about the how the shape of the bird's wing changes during flight.

This calls for basic research. Since the launch of the project in 2008, the team of scientists has succeeded in studying owl wings during gliding flight; the forthcoming measurements will be focussing on the wing beat phase.

The results obtained will not only help to determine the airflow around the wing, enabling the flight of birds to be better understood, but will also be incorporated into modern aviation. "It's not as though we are going to apply these results to an A380 – its flight characteristics bear no resemblance to those of an owl.

But the research results can be applied to smaller, unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs," explains Andreas Dillmann, Head of the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology.

Researching the sequence of movements in flight

It is not easy to study the shape of a bird's wing during flight. In contrast to a mechanical device, whose location is known, it is not possible to forecast where a living creature will be next.

"In some of the tests, the owl may fly slightly higher, or slightly lower; it all depends. Although this may cause difficulties, the owls should not be influenced in any way, since we want to ensure that the flight is as authentic as possible," explains Thomas Wolf from the DLR Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology.

To determine the position of the owl in the room and the shape of its wing surface area, Wolf projects a pattern onto the upper and lower sides of the owl's wings and records it using state-of-the-art video technology.

Afterwards, he and his colleagues can assign various image points to this pattern on the computer, from which they can calculate the shape of the wing surface. This enables researchers to track the sequences of movements.

The optical measuring system has an accuracy of approximately 0.5 millimetres. The entire wing has been analysed during gliding flight, with the exception of the leading edge. Currently, the curvature of the wing prevents this part from being measured accurately; software to accomplish this is under development.


These trials will use eight cameras, four taking photographs from above and the other four from below. The dot pattern will be projected onto the wings of the owl from above and below as well.

This projector-based measuring system can also be useful for the aviation sector; some mechanical components, such as a turbine, cannot be 'painted' with patterns or templates for accurate measurement purposes – the paint would burn off when the turbine started.

However, if an optical measurement check for quality control purposes is required, it is possible to apply such a pattern through the use of projectors.

Read more here

NASA Reviving its 'Blue Sky' Think Tank

(Illustration: NASA/Pat Rawlings/SAIC)

NIAC has funded research into spacesuits that could be coated with proteins to generate electricity solely through the natural movement of the astronauts wearing them

NASA should revive its Institute for Advanced Concepts, a blue-skies idea mill that closed in 2007, says an expert panel – but it says the new incarnation should have its feet a little closer to the ground.

NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) was founded in 1998 to harvest innovative ideas for spaceflight and aeronautics from outside the NASA community.

It received $4 million a year, about 0.02 per cent of NASA's annual budget, and funded more than 100 futuristic spaceflight and aeronautics projects that no one else would touch. The projects included motion-sensitive spacesuits that generate their own power, techniques to construct buildings in space using radio waves, and spherical robots to explore Mars, among many others.

But in 2007, a combination of budget constraints and internal politics shut the organisation down. On Friday, a committee convened by the US National Research Council released a report suggesting that NASA bring back the think tank.

The committee, which included a mix of people from academia and industry, found that NIAC had been successful right up until its final days. "They were definitely living up to their contract at the time they were terminated," says committee co-chair Robert Braun, a professor of space technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Three NIAC-funded projects are now "on a path toward one day being a NASA mission", Braun says, including a prototype plasma rocket, an X-ray interferometer that is being considered for NASA's Black Hole Imager mission, and a "star shade", which could help existing space telescopes search for extrasolar planets.

Other projects have had unexpected medical spinoffs, like a skin-tight spacesuit that can help children with cerebral palsy walk. "By and large, the topics that they invested in were pushing the state of the art, were very advanced in terms of far-out thinking, and I'd say a decent percentage of them had the possibility of turning into something," Braun told New Scientist.