Business
General Atomics, San Diego, California, has been awarded a $22,164,736 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations (DRACO) - Track A program. Work will be performed in San Diego, California (71%); Louisville, Colorado (19%); Rockville, Maryland (3%); Seattle, Washington (4%); and Cullman, Alabama
Software
The Ingenuity team has identified a software solution for the command sequence issue identified on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned high-speed spin-up test of the helicopter’s rotors. Over the weekend, the team considered and tested multiple potential solutions to this issue, concluding that minor modification
Research
As an instructor at the Brazilian Air Force Academy, Flavio Antonio Coimbra Mendonça was flying in formation when one of his colleagues experienced a bird strike to the leading edge of his aircraft’s right wing. It was a relatively minor incident — not nearly as dramatic as the U.S.
Commercial
A new Australian study found that methods of shepherding have a direct impact on animal welfare and in particular, farmers who use drones to herd their flock have less stressed sheep. Kate Yaxley from UNSW Canberra The drones emit sounds to help direct the sheep. "We measured the variations
Commercial
Farmers Tom and Bill Alston use drones to take some of the stress and injury risk out of mustering sheep and cattle on their Beeac property in the south-west of Victoria State, Australia. The use of drones on-farm to muster stock, instead of using horses or motorbikes, has
Commercial
A research team at the Georgia Institute of Technology has developed a modular solution for handling larger packages without the need for a complex fleet of drones of varying sizes. By allowing teams of small drones to collaboratively lift objects using an adaptive control algorithm, the strategy could allow a
Testing
Insitu Pacific and Boeing Australia’s Detect and Avoid (DAA) capability is now ready to field in real-world operations after test flights demonstrated enhanced detection ranges between an unmanned aircraft system (UAS) and other airspace users. The technology is designed to advance the ability to safely integrate UAS into
Military
In June 2020, Azerbaijan announced it had purchased Bayraktar TB2 combat drones from Turkey. A few months later, during the Nagorno-Karabakh war, the Turkish UAVs were used. They were responsible for the destruction of military and civilian infrastructures, places of worship and residential areas in Karabakh, killing civilians in
Commercial
The FIXAR drone from Latvia claims to outperform other models in its class in both payload capacity and distance coverage.
C-UAS
Critical National Infrastructure and airports are just two examples of secure sites that require the ability to detect and assess potential security threats, such as drones. However, they do not typically have the budget for the current generation of highly capable military-grade Detect/Track/Identify (DTI) systems that would
Commercial
Researchers from the Robotics Research Centre at the International Institute of Information Technology Hyderabad have unveiled a working prototype of a flexible drone that changes its shape to fit the size of package to be lifted. Size Matters. Ask 24-year-old robotics researcher Suraj Bonagiri and he’ll explain
Commercial
Dronecloud recently announced that it was awarded a 5-year deal to provide Flight Management Systems (FMS) for Network Rail’s growing drone operation. The deal delivers safety and efficiency for the drone operations of today while paving the way for Network Rail to embrace the opportunities offered by future