Airbus Group Launches Joint Brand
The EADS Group, Toulouse, France, has been rebranded as Airbus Group. Going forward, the group comprises Airbus, focusing on commercial aircraft activities; Airbus Defence and Space, integrating the group’s defense and space activities from Cassidian, Astrium and Airbus Military; and Airbus Helicopters, comprising all commercial and military helicopter activities.
In addition, the GEO-Information Division of Astrium Services becomes the program line Geo-Intelligence. The division will be part of the Communication, Intelligence & Security business line of Airbus Defence and Space.
Army at “Tipping Point” of UAS Capabilities
Unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology is no longer seen by soldiers as a new system, and as the months and years pass, it will “not just be used by a few, but will become integral to the Army fabric and how it fights and is used and understood,” said Col. Thomas von Eschenbach, UAS capability manager for U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command. “We’re on the tipping point of UAS’ ability to deliver capability to the soldier.”
Eschenbach and others spoke March 18, 2014, at a media roundtable at Redstone Arsenal, Ala., where a celebration was held marking the Army’s milestone of 2 million UAS flight hours. Col. Timothy Baxter, project manager, UAS, noted that it took 20 years for Army UASs to reach 1 million flight hours.
That milestone came in 2010. With increased use of those systems, it took just a few more years to reach the 2 million flight-hours milestone. According to Baxter, what is most impressive is that 90 percent of total UAS flight hours were logged in direct support of combat operations.
ESA Space Debris Radar Detects First Objects
A prototype radar that will help Europe develop capabilities in space-debris surveillance is performing above expectations and showing its capability to detect objects in low orbits.
The radar, installed in the Madrid region of Spain, was handed over to the
European Space Agency (ESA) by industry in November 2013 after extensive testing. This novel sensor contains key technologies for detecting space debris in low orbits and is an important step toward operational radars. Building collision-warning capabilities would boost the safety of Europe’s satellites in low and medium orbits.
The testbed is already spotting objects of around a meter in size, depending on their altitude and other factors. While this is less than the performance needed for a fully operational system, it already is sufficient to test and refine new technologies and techniques.
Hexagon Acquires German UAS Maker
Kassel, Germany-based Aibotix, recently acquired by Hexagon, makes the Aibot X6 UAS shown here.
Hexagon, a global provider of design, measurement and visualization solutions, recently acquired Aibotix, the maker of the Aibot X6, a multirotor, vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft system (UAS).
The Aibot X6 is designed to suit the needs of customers in the industrial inspection, aerial mapping, surveying, utility and security markets. UAS-based solutions are ideal for delivering up-to-date geospatial information and aiding in hard-to-reach areas, from difficult infrastructure inspections of power lines, bridges and dams to locally focused mapping tasks of buildings or any vertical structure.
NASA Assists California Agriculture
As more drought looms, satellites are providing California growers with valuable information. Ocean tides provide insight toward the onset of rain and snow, and NASA satellite information provided by the Terrestial Observation and Prediction System, NASA Earth Exchange and Satellite Irrigation Management Support is helping farmers prepare for upcoming drought conditions as warmer weather approaches.
These technologies are helping California growers with irrigation management, crop development and water-use efficiency. The California Department of Water is using NASA’s information to notify irrigation managers of water requirements for their crops as the drought season draws nearer.
NASA’s Operation IceBridge Begins New Arctic Campaign
NASA’s P-3 leaves the hangar at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia on the morning of March 10 to prepare for the flight to Thule Air Base, Greenland.
Researchers aboard NASA’s P-3 research aircraft left the agency’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va., March 10, 2014, for Greenland to begin a new season of collecting data on Arctic land and sea ice.
The mission, known as Operation IceBridge, is to gather data on changes to polar ice and maintain continuity of measurements between NASA’s Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) missions. The original ICESat mission ended in 2009, and its successor, ICESat-2, is scheduled for launch in 2017.
By flying yearly campaigns, IceBridge provides valuable data on rapidly changing areas of polar land and sea ice. Flights run through May 23, 2014, from Thule Air Base and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, with a weeklong deployment to Fairbanks, Alaska.
NASA: Rain and Snow Mission Promises Unprecedented Views
Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Core Observatory, a joint Earth-observing mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), launched Feb. 27, 2014.
“With this launch, we have taken another giant leap in providing the world with an unprecedented picture of our planet’s rain and snow,” said NASA Administrator Charles Bolden. “GPM will help us better understand our ever-changing climate, improve forecasts of extreme weather events like floods, and assist decision makers around the world to better manage water resources.”
The GPM Core Observatory will take a major step in improving upon the capabilities of the Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM), a joint NASA-JAXA mission launched in 1997 and still in operation. While TRMM measures precipitation in the tropics, the GPM Core Observatory expands the coverage area from the Arctic Circle to the Antarctic Circle. GPM also will be able to detect light rain and snowfall, a major source of available fresh water in some regions.
Ruling: FAA Lacks Authority to Ban Commercial UAS
A recent ruling by an administrative law judge holds that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) lacks clear-cut authority to ban the commercial use of unmanned aircraft system (UAS) technology in U.S. continental airspace. The decision, which can be appealed to the full National Transportation Safety Board as well as a federal judge, is bound to complicate FAA’s already challenging job of crafting policies and regulations to oversee the nascent industry, according to The Wall Street Journal.
FAA has banned the commercial use of unmanned aircraft over the U.S. airspace until it develops rules to integrate drones into the national airspace—a process that is expected to take until 2015 even for the smallest unmanned vehicles operating in isolated areas. More comprehensive rules covering larger models are likely to take years longer to complete.
Commercial drone use has been taking off abroad, and many U.S. companies and drone manufacturers have been frustrated with FAA’s stance. Recently, however, the FAA’s hard line on commercial drones appears to be eroding. The agency is considering case-by-case approvals or waivers for certain commercial uses of drones before it completes broader rules for small unmanned systems, according to government and industry officials and lawyers involved in the discussions.
Tiny Proba-V Satellite Is a Workhorse
The European Space Agency’s Proba-V minisatellite collected more than 5,000 images, 65 daily global maps and six 10-day global syntheses as well as provided a quick peek at the Olympics—all during the first two months after entering routine service in early December 2013. Measuring less than a cubic meter, Proba-V tracks vegetation growth across the world on a near-daily basis—93 percent of the globe is covered in one day and 100 percent in two days—using its main wide-viewing Vegetation camera.
Proba-V offers daily near-global coverage at 333-meter resolution with geolocation accuracy better than one pixel. The central 500 kilometers of Proba-V’s 2,250-kilometer field of view is even sharper—about 100-meter resolution in the visible and near-infrared and some 200-meter resolution in the shortwave infrared.
WorldView-3 Spacecraft Ready for Key Testing
WorldView-3 employs the Ball Configurable Platform BCP 5000 spacecraft, which is designed to handle next-generation optical and synthetic aperture radar remote sensing payloads.
With the imagery sensor and associated electronics now integrated, Ball Aerospace recently announced the completed WorldView-3 satellite bus is ready for system-level performance testing, followed by thermal vacuum and environmental testing. The company also is providing an atmospheric instrument called CAVIS, which stands for Cloud, Aerosol,
Water Vapor, Ice, Snow.
Operating at an expected altitude of 617 kilometers, WorldView-3 will provide 31-
centimeter panchromatic resolution, 1.24-
meter multispectral resolution and 3.7-meter short-wave infrared resolution. CAVIS will offer 30-meter resolution and provide correction data to improve WorldView-3’s imagery when it images Earth objects through haze, soot, dust or other obscurants. The satellite is expected to launch this summer from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif.