Technology

NASA Flies Ikhana UAV to Help California Firefighters

posted: 24 October 2007 04:41 pm ET

: NASA's Ikhana unmanned aerial vehicle banks away, showing the wildfire sensor package mounted under its left wing. From mid-August through September, 2007, NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center flew the remotely piloted Ikhana, a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator B unmanned aircraft system adapted to civil missions, in a series of flights to demonstrate the capabilities of sophisticated new thermal-infrared imaging sensors and real-time data communications equipment developed at NASA's Ames Research Center. The sensor is capable of peering through thick smoke and haze to record hot spots and the progression of wildfires over a lengthy period. Credit: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Photo Collection
: NASA satellites have obtained new images of the California wildfires, illustrating the immense scale of the blazes. The National Interagency Fire Center reports that 12 large, uncontained fires have burned over 335,000 acres in Southern California. The fires have continued to spread due to the fierce, dry Santa Ana winds, though these are expected to die out on Oct. 25. This image of the fires between Los Angeles and San Diego was captured by NASAÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Terra satellite at 2:25 p.m. EST on October 23, 2007. Credit: NASA/MODIS Rapid Response
: Ikhana's Autonomous Modular Sensor-Wildfire sensor package is capable of peering through thick smoke and haze to record hot spots and the progression of wildfires over a lengthy period. The first flight of a demonstration series on Aug. 16, 2007 captured images of California wildfires, including the huge Zaca Fire in Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties. Other flights in the series took the aircraft to obtain images of wildfires burning in the Pacific Northwest during missions lasting more than 20 hours. Ikhana's image data is overlaid on Google Earth maps and downlinked in near-real time to the Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Then it is made available to fire incident commanders to assist them in allocating their fire-fighting resources. Credit: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center Photo Collection

NASA pilots are remotely flying the agency's Ikhana unmanned airplane over as many as seven of a dozen Southern California wildfires today.

Ikhana is carrying a specially developed sensor package of instruments that can see through smoke, and will transmit infra-red images and temperature data to firemen on the ground to help them fight the raging fires.

The flight plan for the 10-hour mission called for Ikhana to take off from NASA Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif., from where it would set a course to observe the fires near Lake Arrrowhead. Then it would fly as far south as San Diego County, near the Mexican border.

Designed for long-endurance, high-altitude flight, Ikhana is a General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Predator B unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), one of the UAV types that the U.S. Air Force is operating in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Fire sensor package

NASA Ames Research Center developed a sensor package called the Autonomous Modular Sensor-Wildfire for Ikhana, to let the aircraft look through the smoke of large wildfires to see hot spots, flames and temperature differences.

The Ikhana aircraft's sensors take infra-red images of fires, then process the images on board, said Jim Brass of NASA Ames, who flew to NASA Dryden to conduct today's Ikhana's mission. The UAV is being flown remotely by pilots located at NASA Dryden.

"After processing, the images are transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames where the imagery is placed on an Ames Web site. Then the imagery is combined with Google Earth maps," said Brass.

"We anticipated an event like the wildfire siege in Southern California occurring in October," said Vince Ambrosia of NASA Ames, the project's principal investigator.

"When the call came on Monday from the National Interagency Fire Center, the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services and colleagues within the Incident Command structure on the fires, we were ready to quickly deploy our teams and initiate a mission plan to over fly the fires and provide critical thermal infrared intelligence on the various wildfires," Ambrosia said.

Ground teams help with data

"We will have team members at various fire camps to assist in the integration of the data and imagery derived from the AMS-WILDFIRE sensor on the NASA Ikhana UAV, while other members of the team are in place at Dryden, NASA-Ames, Google and the National Interagency Fire Center," Ambrosia explained.

Last month, NASA conducted Ikhana flights as part of a series of wildfire imaging demonstration missions in cooperation with the U.S. Forest Service. The flights formed part of the Western States Fire Mission, which demonstrated the improved wildfire imaging and mapping capabilities of the sophisticated imaging sensor and real-time data communications equipment developed at NASA Ames. During the September missions, pilots flew the airplane remotely from NASA Dryden.

NASA Dryden acquired the Ikhana aircraft in November 2006 and adapted it for environmental science and technology research missions. The agency is coordinating each mission with the FAA to allow the remotely piloted aircraft to fly within U.S. national airspace while maintaining separation from other aircraft.

Ikhana is a Native American Choctaw word meaning intelligence, conscious or aware. The name is descriptive of the research goals NASA has established for the aircraft and its related systems. The Ikhana aircraft will fulfill a variety of research roles.

The primary customer for the aircraft is NASA's Suborbital Science Program, part of the agency's Science Mission Directorate. The Suborbital Science Program is using the aircraft for Earth science studies.

A variety of atmospheric and remote sensing instruments, including duplicates of those sensors on orbiting satellites, can be installed to collect data during flights lasting up to 30 hours. The Suborbital Science Program uses both manned and unmanned aircraft to collect data within the Earth's atmosphere, complementing measurements of the same phenomenon taken from space and those taken on the Earth's surface.

Ikhana also used for aircraft systems R&D

NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate will also use the aircraft for advanced aircraft systems research and technology development. Initial experiments will look into the use of fiber optics for wing shape sensing and control and structural loads measurements.

The agency has also purchased a ground control station and satellite communication system for Ikhana. Installed in a mobile trailer, the ground station uplinks flight commands and downlinks aircraft data and mission data. It contains consoles for two pilots and computer workstations for scientists and engineers.

The Ikhana/Predator B UAV has a wingspan of 66 feet and is 36 feet long. It can carry more than 400 pounds of sensors internally and over 2,000 pounds in external under-wing pods. The aircraft is powered by a Honeywell TPE 331-10T turbine engine and can reach altitudes above 40,000 feet.

Ikhana is the first production Predator B equipped with a digital electronic engine controller developed by Honeywell and GA-ASI. This equipment makes Ikhana 5 to 10 percent more fuel efficient than earlier versions of the aircraft, NASA said.