A Loyal Wingman drone rolls out, the U.S. Air Force (USAF) sponsors air taxi-cargo UAS development, and medical deliveries take place in Scotland and Florida — we have quite a wide selection for this month’s news.
Fighter support drone
Boeing Loyal Wingman prototype (Photo: Boeing)
Boeing Australia has just rolled out the first “Loyal Wingman” for the RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) — in essence what looks like a completed first article of three prototypes on order for Australia’s Loyal Wingman Advanced Development Program.
The concept is to develop an “inexpensive, expendable” UAV which will fight alongside today’s frontline fighter aircraft, controlled from the ground or from the air. A “force-multiplier” which doesn’t risk either pilot or the heap-expensive interceptor/ground attack aircraft themselves, a real bonus for smaller air-forces, and a less costly way of increasing numbers.
The first prototype will now go into a ground and flight test program to prove out systems and flight capabilities – first flight would likely be later this year.
A team of 35 Australian aerospace companies are supporting the Loyal Wingman project, including BAE Systems Australia which has been selected to supply the flight vehicle management system, flight control computers and navigation equipment.
Flying cars?
The U.S. Air Force wants a fleet of them by 2023!
So in a novel way to stir interest in the concept of flying cars, or perhaps cargo carrying drones, the Air Force launched a program known as “Agility Prime.” The program may have begun conventionally with seed contract(s) to drone manufacturers, but their latest “webcast” approach provided an extensive overview of what this could mean to the U.S. industry.
From April 27 through May 1, a panel including Air Force leaders, two U.S. Senators, NASA and Federal Aviation Administration management, and key Air Force and Defense Department players participated in an open presentation to industry, investment and State Government participants — all with the aim of accelerating civilian development of “advanced air mobility vehicles.”
Recognizing that a principle problem is overcoming regulatory hurdles, USAF intends to provide a route to commercial revenue service such as logistics transport and disaster recovery by perhaps providing access to its key testing capabilities and facilities. With broad participation in the program by industry, government and investors (i.e. USAF don’t intend to pay for it all) the program would satisfy an operational safety and security baseline and provide a platform for the “Race to Certification” of commercial drone product(s) the USAF might also want to buy.
One of the possible solutions for a cargo drone already funded includes the Sabrewing Cargo Drone – known currently as Rhaegal-A.
Four electric powered ducted fans rotate for Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL) and are powered by a Safran (French) Ardiden 3 helicopter turbine engine – giving this large UAV a design speed of 245 mph, a ceiling of 20,000 feet and range of 1000 miles.
Sabrewing has received $3.25m under a two year USAF sponsored Small Business Incentive Research (SBIR) project in the hope that the design could be eventually adapted to military logistics applications. The vehicle is intended to be able to fly autonomously, has detect and avoid capability, and can even operate when GPS is continuously jammed — something the military would probably appreciate. Potential casualty evacuation is also of great interest.
Medical supplies delivery
Meanwhile in the U.K., in cooperation with the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), Skyports drone company is playing in the CAA’s “Sandbox.” This is another term for an umbrella/sequence of trials under CAA safety and security constraints where innovative approaches are given a chance to demonstrate that new aviation related things are possible, that they actually work and that they meet the CAA criteria. Skyports wants to test out Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) operations for its upcoming trial of medical deliveries between Oban and Mull off the West Coast of Scotland.
As front-line health professionals fight to beat the COVID-19 pandemic, deliveries of essential medical supplies between medical facilities can be speeded-up significantly using drones. Skyports will begin the week-long trial between Mull and Oban medical centers in the last week of May.
The planned BVLOS flights will be over a 17-mile route in unrestricted airspace and avoid the Oban airport, crossing the narrow sea channel and onto the North coast of the Isle of Mull. Skyports already has experience transporting medical and other high-value cargo in other parts of the world. The candidate drone is equipped with Iris Automation Casia detect-and-avoid computer vision system, and Thales Remote ID, and the Skyports drone team is also supported by Thales SOARIZON flight management and mission planning system.
Drones to deliver prescriptions
And finally, something quite helpful during the current coronavirus pandemic — CVS and UPS having linked up some time ago, are to begin delivering prescription medication to customers in Florida. The process has been previously checked out during November last year trials in Cary, N.C.
UPS will use the Swiss Matternet M2 delivery drone, picking up medication at specific CVS location(s) and flying it to a delivery point at “The Villages” in Central Florida, then the “last-mile” delivery is by road — presumably by an outfit which knows the layout of this huge facility where something like 130,000 retirees live. Useful during this phase of Florida’s self-quarantine for elders who may find it difficult to get out to the drug store. Hope they start running the same service out of my local CVS.
Wrap-up
So from the extreme military application of drone support for fighter attack missions, and USAF sponsored development of air-taxis and cargo drones, through to medical supply deliveries by drone in remote areas of Scotland and prescription deliveries in Florida — activity never seems to abate in this growing industry.
The world so close has never seemed so far away. Locked up and adrift, somewhere between the comfort of the past and the anxiety of the future, the present slowly passes by in a procession of nameless days. The living room has become a sundial. Shadows pass from one wall in the morning to the far side by day’s end. Outside, spring has sprung, but inside, winter lingers on.
Alone, we can do so little. Together, we can do so much. —Helen Keller
Times like these, detached and disruptive, are opportunities in disguise. Ironically, while the world is confined and socially distanced from one another, humanity is more connected than it has ever been. Hard to believe, but smart mobile devices began just over a decade ago; and we are in the midst of a growing tsunami of connected devices, cloud computing, big data and open source. These events, coinciding with the exponential growth of geographic information systems and data analytics, have set the stage for crowdsourcing and citizen science. The era of empowering individual contributors has begun.
It has probably gone unnoticed due to all the political wrangling in Washington, D.C., but over the last two administrations, with bi-partisan support, without recognition or renown, a monument to American ingenuity was christened. Beginning in 2010, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act was passed. Then, in 2014, the White House elevated homegrown inventors and creators calling it the Maker Movement and hosted the first-ever National Maker Faire. In 2015, the STEM Education Act became law and in the same year the Senate introduced The Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science Act. In 2017, the American Innovation Competitiveness Act became law formally coining the term, crowdsourcing. In 2019, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) delivered the first-ever comprehensive report to Congress about federal agencies activities involving crowdsourcing and citizen science (FedCCS). Also in 2019, OSTP along with the General Services Administration (GSA) hosted the U.S. Government Open Innovation Summit.
The OSTP FedCCS report to Congress titled, “Implementation of Federal Prize and Citizen Science Authority,” cites 169 FedCCS prize competitions conducted by 18 federal agencies, such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), and the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST). However, the number of FedCCS projects is much greater than what is covered in the report. On Challenge.gov the amount of competitions rose from 744 in 2016 to 875 in 2018, and the prize awards ranged from $0 to $20 million with an average payout of $75,000 in FY2018. The next report is due in 2021.
Governments tapping into the resources of its citizens for innovation is not new, but it has never been on this scale and granted such authority. One of the first official attempts was the United Kingdom’s Longitude Prize in 1719 offering a King’s ransom of £20,000 [see article: From the Pyramids to GIS/GPS] to solve positioning at sea. Great Britain still honors the original Longitude Prize using the name for their national grand crowdsource competition. Similarly, in the United States the grand challenge is the X-Prize, the most famous one being the Ansari X prize. You may not know the prize by its name, but as NASA’s Space Shuttle Program phased down, the Ansari X-Prize kicked-off the space race among private companies. Scaled Composites won the $10 million prize in 2004 reaching space in a reusable craft, which became Virgin Galactic.
The term “crowdsourcing” means a method to obtain needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting voluntary contributions from a group of individuals or organizations, especially from an online community. —15 USC Chapter 63 §3724 (2): Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science
The U.S. Federal Government already relies on the public for information to help improve and maintain its products and better serve the country. The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has had an ongoing cooperative with the U.S. Power Squadrons since 1963 to report safety hazards to navigation and help maintain the information on maritime nautical charts. The agreement to support NOAA was renewed in 2013 for another 50 years.
Image: U.S. Geological Survey
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) accepts reports from the general public, especially aircraft pilots regarding the accuracy of information in the products it publishes which can affect changes to aeronautical charts and flight operations.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) has The National Map Corps (TNMCorps), which began in 1994 with the Earth Science Corps and the Adopt-a-Quad program. These two programs consolidated into a single online crowdsourcing effort to support USGS in 2013. TNM Corps helps maintain USGS’s maps and allows private citizens to do feature collection activities. It is easy to join and simple to use making it a way for all ages to join the crowdsource movement. What is also significant about USGS is that Dr. Sophia Liu, Co-Chair of the Federal Community of Practice for Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science resides there. Dr. Liu helped stand-up FEMA’s crowdsourcing and citizen science unit in 2007. She is now the coordinator of FedCCS activities and helped co-write the 2019 OSTP FedCCS report to Congress.
Crowdsourcing is about actively engaging people in a certain task, sometimes a very specific micro-task that includes a two-way feedback loop with the public. We need to leverage the human power that is better at understanding, processing, and communicating information.
—Dr. Sophia B Liu, Innovation Specialist, USGS
Some of the most popular sites for GIS enthusiasts to get involved are Open Street Maps (OSM), GISCorps, GeoHIVE and Zooniverse. OSM has more than 2 million contributors worldwide and has been on the front line of international disasters beginning with the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. Through its Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) it has supported operations of the Red Cross, FEMA, and United Nations. Through the power of the crowd, OSM contributors rapidly map transportation networks in disaster areas to show the most accessible routes in order for rescue operations and emergency supplies to reach the most impacted communities.
The GIS Corps, founded in 2003, operates under URISA and coordinates short-term mapping volunteer projects for humanitarian relief, human rights, disaster response, and other important efforts. Over 4,500 volunteers have helped support 195 missions around the world such as Hurricane Katrina, Ebola outbreaks in Sierra Leone, and the Nepal earthquake, in fact, if there is a crisis somewhere in the world, GISCorps is most likely going to have an effort in place to support it.
GeoHIVE (Geospatial Human Imagery Verification Effort) is an imagery based geospatial crowdsource platform which began in 2015 eventually replacing Tomnod in 2018. Digital Globe formed a collaboration with Radiant Solutions, SSL and MDA combining efforts and resources creating a more robust crowdsourcing platform. GeoHIVE’s 3,000 volunteers have contributed to nearly 700 campaigns. Registering for GeoHIVE requires an Amazon Mechanical Turk account, which allows contributors to be compensated for crowdsource tasks.
Zooniverse began as an astronomy site to enable hobbyists to help classify galaxy types but quickly grew into a crowdsource platform that encompasses all sorts of projects in addition to its cosmic origins including art, biology, literature and there are several spatially related projects to be found, as well. With Zooniverse you can contribute to science by studying gravitational waves or categorizing auroras as the ionized plasma washes up onto our cosmic shore.
90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today. —Steven N. Rader, Deputy Manager, NASA, Center of Excellence
That quote by Steven Rader of NASA is accredited to Derek de Solla Price in 1961 referring to the exponential growth in the number of PhD’s and patents throughout the world. But now, science is in the hands of the Makers — those with 3D printers or those who can program a virtual world, or design an augmented reality, or those who can extract patterns from data and provide meaningful intelligence in geography, demographics, genetics, biology, and every field of study.
Citizen scientists are making a significant mark upon the world. Take for example CeCe Moore, a genealogy hobbyist who became a self-taught expert and now tracks down killers solving several cases using her laptop and open source DNA records. Gary Hug, a backyard astronomer, who built his own observatory in Topeka, Kansas, has discovered over 300 asteroids in near Earth orbits, and in March, Michael Mattiazzo, a citizen scientist astronomy enthusiast, discovered comet (C/2020 F8) SWAN which will make its closest approach to Earth on May 13th inside Earth’s orbit. Then there is Ted Ground, a citizen scientist hero. Ted is a winner in multiple citizen science competitions winning the NASA ideation challenge for the Mars ballast payload, the Bureau of Land Reclamation challenge for identifying insect invertebrates in rivers and estuaries, and the INNOcentive challenge for identifying trace minerals in livestock.
The day before something is truly a breakthrough, it’s a crazy idea.
—Peter Diamandis, executive chairman of the X Prize Foundation
Challenges are competitions sponsored by governments, private industry, non-profits and international entities. At the end of this article are listed several challenge sites. Agencies of the U.S. government post their challenges on Challenge.gov and CitizenScience.gov. Challenges are opportunities to work on projects for NASA, DOD, EPA, NOAA, FEMA, USGS, DARPA, and a growing list of agencies and companies. Most of these projects can be worked on at home with a laptop. Some challenges are for money or other prizes and some are just for the recognition, but all of them are ways to improve skills, build connections, and enhance a resume.
In closing, the legislation signed into law since 2010 culminating in the America Innovation and Competitiveness Act of 2017 requiring bi-annual reports to Congress directs federal agencies to use Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science. This movement empowers the individual. There has never been a better time for an idea whose time has come.
All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea. —Napoleon Hill, Author of Think and Grow Rich
A final note: The four-part television series, “The Crowd & the Cloud,” sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and hosted by Waleed Abdalati, former NASA chief scientist, can be seen here.
According to AUVSI, the series will offer information, insights and insider knowledge covering a number of topics, including drone delivery, public safety, connectivity, and other aspects of the unmanned systems and robotics industry.
These webinars are being held because of the rescheduled Xponential 2020 conference. Xponential 2020 was originally scheduled to take place May 4-8 in Boston, but is now tentatively scheduled to take place Aug. 9-12.
AUVSI offered an overview of the webinars, which are all complimentary.
Digital Twins — The Future of Virtual and Mixed Reality Robotic Avatars Date: Monday, May 4, 3-4 p.m. EDT Speaker: Peter Haas, associate director, Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative, Brown University
Hass will describe how advances in mixed and virtual reality control will lead to a UX revolution for avatar-based robotic teleoperation, where the manipulation of digital twins will translate to manipulation of a robot — or robots — in the physical world. Register here.
Drone Delivery Supporting Public Health Date: Tuesday, May 5, 3-4 p.m. EDT Speakers: Eric Gardiner and Eric Lasker, federal business development, Zipline
Executives from Zipline will describe how drone delivery has evolved through the Federal Aviation Administration UAS Integration Pilot Program and is now being adapted to help community healthcare partners respond to COVID-19 in the United States. Register here.
NASA’s Vision and Role to Enable Urban Air Mobility Date: Wednesday, May 6, 3-4 p.m. EDT Speakers: Robert Pearce, associate administrator, NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Brian Wynne, president and CEO, AUVSI
Pearce will review initiatives to enable small UAS operating at low altitude through a UAS Traffic Management System and large UAS operating in higher altitude airspace with definitive flight experiments to validate key standards, such as detect-and-avoid technology. Wynne will host a discussion with Pearce about his full vision for future aviation, including what the next 50 years has in store for commercial airline travel and urban air mobility. Register here.
Advancing Autonomy Through DARPA Challenge to Benefit First Responders Date: Thursday, May 7, 3-4 p.m. EDT Speaker: Dr. Timothy Chung, program manager, DARPA Tactical Technology Office
DARPA’s Subterranean Challenge engages international teams to deploy autonomous systems — rolling, walking, flying and floating — to remotely map, identify and report on artifacts discovered along underground courses. Chung will discuss persisting challenges with robotics, how teams are succeeding in competition while advancing unmanned capabilities and how these lessons can benefit first responders. Register here.
Aerial Connectivity Joint Activity — Bridging the Gap Between Cellular and Aviation Date: Friday, May 8, 2-3 p.m. Speaker: Mark Davis, technical lead, ACJA
Davis will explore the latest roadmap for aviation and cellular communications, including how recent initiatives such as Aerial Connectivity Joint Activity (ACJA) are aimed at providing a standards framework to enable unmanned aerial cellular. ACJA is a joint activity between GSMA, which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, and the Global UTM Association, a non-profit consortium of worldwide Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management stakeholders. Register here.
NASA is partnering with the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand Space Agency, Air New Zealand and the University of Auckland to install next-generation GNSS reflectometry receivers on passenger aircraft to collect environmental science data over New Zealand.
The program is part of NASA’s Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, a constellation of eight small satellites launched in 2016 that use GPS satellite signals that reflect off Earth’s surface to collect science data.
The CYGNSS satellites orbit above the tropics and their primary mission is to use GPS signals to measure wind speed over the ocean by examining GPS signal reflections off choppy versus calm water. This allows researchers to gain new insight into wind speed over the ocean and will allow them to better understand hurricanes and tropical cyclones.
Measurements over land
In addition to its primary over-water research capabilities, scientists have discovered that the CYGNSS technology is also capable of collecting valuable measurements over land, including of soil moisture, flooding, and wetland and coastal environments.
“Partnering with New Zealand offers NASA and the CYGNSS team a unique opportunity to develop these secondary capabilities over land. Taken together over time, they’ll also have an important story to tell about the long-term impacts of climate change to these landscapes,” said Gail Skofronick-Jackson, CYGNSS program scientist at NASA Headquarters, Washington.
The CYGNSS team, led by principal investigator Chris Ruf at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, has developed a next-generation GNSS reflectivity receiver with support from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office. These receivers will be installed in late 2020 on one of Air New Zealand’s Q300 domestic aircraft.
Artist’s concept of one of the eight CYGNSS satellites in orbit. (Image: NASA/University of Michigan)
Aircraft overlap satellite path
As the aircraft traverses New Zealand, it will collect data from the land below, some of which will overlap with the flight paths of the CYGNSS satellites.
This overlap, which will have frequent data observations from regular commercial flights, will provide the CYGNSS team a wealth of data to use to validate and improve the CYNGSS satellite observations, said Ruf.
In addition, the varied New Zealand terrain will provide comparison points with data collected in similar terrains in other parts of the world.
“As a result of this partnership, both Air New Zealand engineers and researchers across New Zealand will now have the opportunity to work with NASA on a world-leading environmental science mission,” said Peter Crabtree, general manager of Science, Innovation and International at New Zealand’s Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment.
Science Payload Operation Centre
The University of Auckland will host the Science Payload Operation Centre, which will begin operations and data collection in late 2020.
“Over time, the data that will be collected by these receivers could form one of New Zealand’s largest bodies of long-term environmental data, and as such it represents a wide range of research opportunities,” said radar systems engineer and project lead Delwyn Moller of the University of Auckland.
Air New Zealand will be the first passenger airline to partner with NASA to collect data for a science mission. Air New Zealand has 23 Q300s in its fleet, and if the approach is successful, the airline will explore introducing the technology more widely.
An Air New Zealand Bombadier Q300. (Photo: Air New Zealand/NASA)
“As an airline, we’re already seeing the impact of climate change, with flights impacted by volatile weather and storms. Climate change is our biggest sustainability challenge, so it’s incredible we can use our daily operations to enable this world-leading science,” said Air New Zealand Chief Operational Integrity and Standards Officer Captain David Morgan.
The agreement will enable AER to process satellite data for commercial companies that sell their Earth observation data products to government agencies and other organizations that provide customized environmental information to a range of clients.
Under the agreement, AER will adapt UCAR’s SatDAACâ software system to process observations from satellites using GNSS radio occultation to observe the atmosphere. Those observations can lead to significantly improved weather forecasts.
From basic research to industry
GNSS radio occultation measures the extent to which the radio signals from GNSS transmitter satellites (including GPS satellites) bend as they propagate through denser regions of the atmosphere.
The measurements can be further processed into information about temperature, pressure, and humidity in the lower atmosphere as well as the electron density in the ionosphere. The technique provides considerable accurate knowledge about a large volume of the atmosphere from near-Earth orbit down to the surface.
Image: NOAA
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was first to use radio occultation to profile the atmospheres of Mars, Venus, and the outer planets starting in the 1960s. UCAR, in collaboration with JPL, pioneered the GNSS radio occultation observing technique for Earth’s atmosphere, building on basic research with funding from the National Science Foundation.
In 2006, UCAR began producing the first operational GNSS radio occultation data from a specialized constellation of small satellites known as the Constellation Observing System for Meteorology, Ionosphere, and Climate (COSMIC). The observations from COSMIC led to improved predictions of tropical cyclones and other storms as well as information about space weather and global climate.
A second constellation of small satellites, known as COSMIC-2, was launched in June 2019. It will provide twice as many soundings of the atmosphere with higher quality than COSMIC.
More GNSS-RO satellites coming
Now that the technology has been successfully demonstrated, additional satellites with GNSS radio occultation technology are being launched.
“This technology has moved quickly from being a research concept to providing vital information to forecasters,” said Ying-Hwa “Bill” Kuo. “The original investment in basic research is generating substantial benefits for society.”
Lead GNSS radio occultation researcher at AER Stephen Leroy said, “Earth radio occultation has a nearly 30-year history and has been a revolutionary force in numerical weather prediction and climate science in that time; and now with the commercialization of RO [radio occultation] data, we are looking forward to an explosion in RO data volume. I am really excited that we are performing the operational processing of this new data stream and expanding its scope and utility.”
The UCAR-AER agreement will likely lead to further advances in GNSS radio occultation technology, according to Bill Schreiner, director of the UCAR COSMIC Program.
“By transferring technology to the private sector, AER can take it to the next level in terms of distributing the data and finding new applications that help society,” he said. “This agreement will leverage SatDAAC’s advanced capabilities to develop new products for use by the environmental observing and prediction communities and will help us continue to innovate.”
At least three commercial enterprises are currently developing and deploying nanosatellites and microsatellites that perform GNSS radio occultation — Spire, GeoOptics and PlanetiQ — as well as several international space agencies.
AER works with governments and businesses worldwide to advance understanding of climate- and weather-related risks. The company develops analytical tools to help measure and observe the properties of the environment and translate those measurements into actionable information.
UCAR is a nonprofit consortium of 120 colleges and universities focused on research and training in the atmospheric and related sciences.
This image shows the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation Lidar (GEDI) being assembled NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (Photo: NASA)
Under a contract with the University of Maryland, Ecometrica, a sustainability and space data company, will be helping disseminate data from NASA’s latest “Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation” (GEDI) lidar instrument.
According to Ecometrica, the Ecometrica Platform will make processed maps more widely available to end users and reduce the need for additional processing of highly technical remote sensing lidar data.
GEDI is led by the University of Maryland, in collaboration with NASA Goddard Spaceflight Center, and deploys a multibeam lidar instrument onboard the International Space Station to measure the forest vertical structure and biomass. Carried from Earth to the International Space Station atop a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, it is already providing valuable raw data, which will be crucial in better understanding climate change and the Earth’s ecosystems, Ecometrica said.
“The value of downstream satellite data in managing climate and environmental risks is significant and it is important that this is available and easily accessible to users all over the world,” said Richard Tipper, executive chairman at Ecometrica. “Projects such as Forests 2020, the global forest monitoring initiative that is part of the U.K. Space Agency’s international program, and managed by Ecometrica, are already proving very successful in using data from space to protect ecosystems on Earth. Importantly, this has also helped create an international skills-base and infrastructure across tropical forest countries, which can now benefit from the results of the very latest Earth observation instruments from NASA.”
The lidar instrument is operated by the university, which is working with Ecometrica to make data available globally in a format that is easy to use for environmental monitoring and protection purposes. According to Ecometrica, its platform will display key findings on rapidly updating maps, allowing conservation organizations and government agencies around the world to tap into the findings and use the real-time data to monitor forest canopies and cover.
The partnership is set to continue as part of the latest three-year contract.
The MQ-9 Reaper drone. (Photo: U.S. Air Force/Paul Ridgeway)
A small aircraft’s encounter with a likely military drone near Edwards Air Force Base resulted in navigation failure, according to a report filed with NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting System.
In October 2019, a single engine Piper P-46 Malibu was flying at 24,000 feet 36 miles north of Los Angeles en route San Diego.
Defense drone overhead
The pilot reported, “I saw a DOD drone (inverted V tail) pass overhead approximately 1,000 [feet] above. At the same time, my PFD [primary flight display] indicated that I had a large magnetic variation error, and in turn … indicated that I was now flying to a new way point (TCH VOR) located in Utah, well off my flight plan.”
Later, the navigation system indicated that the aircraft was on its way to a spot in Montana.
Interestingly, the flight plan displayed by another cockpit instrument, the Multi-Function Display, was not affected.
The aircraft had been operating under an Instrument Flight Plan. Federal Aviation Administration rules for light aircraft allow such operation with GPS as the sole navigation sensor.
With the primary flight display not operating properly, the aircraft was no longer able to fly a safe instrument approach to landing. Fortunately, the weather was such that it could proceed and land using Visual Flight Rules.
In the pilot’s words, “Had it not been a VMC [visual meteorological conditions] day allowing me to fly a visual approach, I would have had to [advise Air Traffic Control] – and find a way to land without any reliable approach capability.”
A combination of factors
The general consensus among experts is that this incident was inadvertent and likely arose from a combination of factors. Most significant were that the drone flew above the light aircraft, temporarily blocking some GPS signals, and emitting electromagnetic radiation from one or more of its on-board systems.
It is not possible to say what those systems and radiation may have been. It is unlikely they were intended to interfere with GPS reception, as that would pose serious safety-of-flight concerns in the nearby congested Los Angeles airspace.
GPS signals are infamously easy to disrupt, though. It is probable that the close proximity of the drone resulted in some radiation from its systems “spilling over” into GPS frequencies and causing the problem.
Of greater concern is that the light aircraft’s systems did not quickly reset and recover once the drone had moved off and the interference ceased. Had the aircraft been flying in the clouds or bad weather, the loss of its only radionavigation source could have been quite serious.
While not clear from the report, it is likely that the navigation system only recovered after a complete shutdown and restart. From the report in the NASA database:
“The system has since been checked and is operating correctly, but it seems pretty clear this was some type of interference / jamming arising from the DOD drone. Clearly, this is a significant risk to all aircraft, and because if [sic] occurred within the LA airspace it is a serious threat to safe flights.”
The need to address interference
Shortly before this incident, the International Civil Aviation Organization identified addressing interference with satellite navigation system signals an “urgent priority.” This was in response to concerns from several member countries and organizations citing safety of flight issues. One example cited was the near loss of a passenger aircraft flying in the mountains during a period of GPS disruption.
The October 2019 report of interference from the drone is number ACN 1696794 in the NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System. It can be accessed by searching here.
The months-long wildfires raging in Australia have killed at least 25 people. Millions — possibly 1 billion — animals have died. More than 2,000 houses have been destroyed. Around 150 fires are still burning in New South Wales and Queensland, with hot and dry conditions accompanied by strong winds fueling to the fires’ spread.
With this conflagration rocking the continent down under, satellite imagery has become important to understanding the scope of the disaster. Here are some of the recent captures.
As seen from the ISS
“Talking to my crew mates, we realized that none of us had ever seen fires at such terrifying scale,” European Space Agency astronaut Luca Parmitano tweeted on Monday, sharing photos taken from the International Space Station.
The astronaut posted images showing what he described as “an immense ash cloud” captured at the time the ISS was flying toward sunset.
An immense ash cloud covers Australia as we fly toward the sunset.
Another social media image, shared widely, was interpreted as a map showing the live extent of fire spread, with large sections of the populous eastern coastline molten red. Because of widespread misinterpretation, the original poster then explained that the image was a 3D visualization and not a photograph of Australia, and showed some areas where fires have been extinguished.
NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Landsat 8 satellite imagery from Jan. 9 shows Kangaroo Island, home to nature reserves. The images were taken using the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on Landsat 8. Using natural-color observations, the images show burned land and thick smoke covering the island, of which at least 156,000 hectares have burned.
Photo: NASA/USGS
The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites are also capturing images, including the resulting plumes of smoke.
Maxar collected satellite imagery Jan. 12 of the wildfires in New South Wales (NSW). The imagery shown below focuses on the area near the town of Eden, and demonstrates the value of the shortwave infrared (SWIR) sensor.
In an image taken with Maxar’s normal RGB color imagery, the smoky air prevents a clear view of the fires and the hot spots. With Maxar’s WorldView-3 satellite, however, the team is able to penetrate through the smoke using its SWIR sensor for a detailed look at the fire lines and burned vegetation.
With SWIR imagery, burning areas are apparent and show up in a glowing orange-red. Healthy vegetation shows up in shades of blue, and burned vegetation appears in shades of brown.
Satellite Photo: :ESA
Copernicus Sentinel-3 imagery
Europe’s Copernicus Sentinel-3 mission has captured the multiple bushfires burning across Australia’s east coast.
In the above image, captured on Nov. 12, 2019, at 23:15 UTC (Nov. 13, 09:15 local time), the fires burning near the coast are visible. Plumes of smoke can be seen drifting east over the Tasman Sea. Hazardous air quality owing to the smoke haze has reached the cities of Sydney and Brisbane.
Flame retardant was dropped in some of Sydney’s suburbs as bushfires approached the city center, and many residents were evacuated. Firefighters continue to keep the blazes under control.
The Copernicus Emergency Management Service – Mapping was activated to help respond to the fires. The service uses satellite observations to help civil protection authorities and, in cases of disaster, the international humanitarian community, respond to emergencies.
Quantifying and monitoring fires is fundamental for the ongoing study of climate, as they have a significant impact on global atmospheric emissions. Data from the Copernicus Sentinel-3 World Fire Atlas shows that there were almost five times as many wildfires in August 2019 compared to August 2018.
The U.S. House Committee on Science, Space and Technology has approved legislation to coordinate federal government space weather research. Included in the bill is a finding that space weather adversely affects space-based position, navigation and timing (PNT).
‘‘The effects of severe space weatheron the electric power grid, satellites and satellite communications and information, aviationoperations, astronauts living and working in space, and space-based position, navigation, and timing systems could have significant societal, economic, national security and health impacts.”
If passed, the bill would mandate coordination of government space weather forecasting and related operations, with input from academia, international groups and commercial firms affected by space weather.
The Promoting Research and Observations of Space Weather to Improve the Forecasting of Tomorrow (PROSWIFT) Act was introduced in November by Democrat Ed Perlmutter of Colorado and Republican Mo Brooks of Alabama, reports Space News. Similar legislation, the Space Weather Research and Forecasting Act, was approved in April by the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
PROSWIFT calls for the National Science and Technology Council to establish an interagency working group on space weather that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), NASA, the National Science Foundation, Defense Department and Interior Department. It directs members of the interagency working group to collaborate with the international community, academia and the commercial space weather sector.
PROSWIFT also tasks NOAA with establishing a space weather advisory group with members representing academia, the commercial space weather sector and space weather data customers.
GNSS and inertial navigation sensors are meeting the challenges of extreme conditions, from freezing Arctic ice to the edges of steaming volcanoes, from high-speed aircraft over cities to the subways under them. Even beyond, into deep space.
IN THE ARCTIC
Wave Buoys Help Study Arctic Climate Change
Where the edge of Arctic ice transitions to open water, towering seas are smashing sea ice into melting pieces, with far-flung effects on climate and nature. Over recent decades, the Arctic has warmed more than any other region, leading to a significant reduction in sea ice volume. The combination of increased ice-free area and more mobile ice cover has led to the emergence of a seasonal marginal ice zone (MIZ) in the Beaufort Sea, north of Prudhoe Bay, Alaska.
The United States Office of Naval Research conducted a five-year study of the MIZ, which included intense field work in the freezing Arctic sea. Here, the ice is vulnerable to ocean surface waves that form in the open water, resulting from strong winds and frequent storms. Also studied were in-ice waves, where ice and water clash. The goal was to understand how both factors impact the ice floe melting.
The MIZ lies in the subarctic seas in winter and transitions into the interior of the Arctic Basin in summer. To investigate the MIZ’s dynamics, ONR engaged an international program of observations and simulations using several autonomous systems, including wave buoys. The wave buoys — officially designated the autonomous ocean flux buoys — integrate SBG Systems’ miniature inertial sensors.
The MIZ study comprised an international team of scientists from more than a dozen organizations.
Buoys for All Seasons. The program included 20 buoys deployed in the summer, and five in the winter, to quantify open ocean and in-ice wave characteristics and evolution. “We needed a very rapid and cost-effective solution to measuring directional wave spectra in the ocean,” said Martin Doble, oceanographer at the French UPMC School and member of the research program. “Time to deployment was very short, so an integrated solution, giving us good heave numbers straight out of the box, was essential. Delivery time of the units was also critical.”
Drilled into the ice, the summer buoys were powered with solar panels and equipped with SBG Systems’ IG-500A miniature attitude and heading reference system to detect both distant and near-wave effects on the local ice floe. Once the ice melted, the summer buoys continued to measure open ocean characteristics.
Five winter buoys were installed on the ice. These buoys were made of aluminum for better resistance and contained enough battery power to keep them going through the dark winter months. Every buoy also contained processing and control electronics, an SD card, a GPS receiver and an Iridium satellite modem and antennas to transmit the recorded data to its base station. Both summer and winter data from the buoys were used to quantify the wave attenuation rate.
Winter buoy installed on an ice floe. (Photo: SBG Systems)
By measuring the waves and ice, the buoys help scientists understand how waves are approaching and breaking up the sea ice. When winter approaches and ice begins to refreeze, the buoys help show how the waves interact with the ice as the temperatures change.
Calibration. The IG-500A inertial sensors were used for wave height and direction. IG-500A measures in real time the roll, pitch, heading (accurate to 0.35°) and heave (accurate to 10 centimeters). Every sensor is calibrated for bias, linearity, gain, misalignment, cross-axis and gyro-g from –40° to +85°C. The calibration is key to enabling the sensors to provide reliable data in the harsh environment.
Doble said the units were reliable, with no failures in the harsh Arctic conditions. They ran continuously for more than a year without requiring power cycling, and “the numbers look good, giving clear results.”
The data is helping researchers understand the physics that control sea ice breakup and melt in and around the ice edge. “We have this amazing picture of the ocean, atmosphere, and ice going from the fully frozen period in March to meltdown and breakup right through to freeze-up,” said Craig Lee of the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory.
The IG-500A sensors also delivered heave measurement, important for instrumented ocean buoys. During the project, SBG Systems released the Ellipse Series, and the new line replaced the IG-500 series. More accurate in attitude and more reliable (with an IP68 rating) for the same budget, the new miniature inertial sensors now provide a heave measurement that automatically adjusts to the wave period, resulting in higher performance.
Clear differences were measured between surface wave activity outside of the ice, and then moving into the ice, with huge attenuation as the waves enter the ice and die back quickly.
Current Arctic Program. Following the close of the MIZ project in 2015, the ONR launched a new project for 2016–2020, the Stratified Ocean Dynamics in the Arctic (SODA). SODA is also taking place in the Beaufort Sea, and is using the autonomous ocean flux buoys. The buoys are now equipped with SBG’s Ellipse-A sensors.
Why the Arctic Matters
“There’s no question that the Arctic sea ice extent is decreasing,” said Martin Jeffries, program officer for the ONR Arctic and Global Prediction Program. “Multiple sources of data — autonomous underwater gliders, ice-measuring buoys and satellite images of the marginal ice zone — were used to help understand why the ice is retreating.”
The implications for the U.S. Navy, and the world, are significant. If there were no sea ice in the Arctic at the end of summer, that would mean that the Arctic Ocean would, until the winter ice came in, be completely open — something unprecedented in living memory, Jeffries noted.
Naval leaders have made it clear that understanding a changing Arctic is essential for the Navy to be prepared to respond effectively to future needs.
“[T]he opening of the Arctic Ocean has important national security implications as well as significant impacts on the U.S. Navy’s required future capabilities,” said then Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert, in his introduction to the U.S. Navy Arctic Roadmap, 2014–2030, published in 2014. “The United States has a history of maritime homeland security and homeland defense concerns in the Arctic Region […] .”
In the period between 2007 and 2014, satellites recorded the eight lowest sea ice levels ever. A key goal of the MIZ and SODA programs is to use the new data collected to make better predictive computer models — ensuring safer operations for not only naval vessels, but also anticipated increased sea traffic by shipping and fishing industries; oil, gas and mining companies; and tourism operations.
Much of the data coming in to Arctic scientists is now from improved sensors, with greater ability to survive the harsh weather and ocean conditions.
Inside the Ellipse
Alexis Guinamard, chief technology officer of SBG Systems, described to GPS World the company’s most advanced sensor for extreme environments.
“Of course we have more precise sensors like Ekinox, Apogee or even Horizon, for ‘extreme’ precision. But for extreme environments, the more appropriate sensor line is the Ellipse series,” Guinamard said. “There are several key parameters that make them better for this kind of environment.”
Those features include a high-temperature calibration range, from –40°C to +85°C, which enables the sensors to operate at the same performance level in the most extreme temperature environments.
“While typical entry-level or industrial-grade sensors only provide a room temperature or basic temperature calibration, we have developed a calibration procedure used for both survey-grade and industrial-grade sensors using a precision two-axis rotary table with temperature chamber,” Guinamard said. “An advanced thermal modeling minimizes the calibration error over the full temperature range.”
Ellipse-D dual-antenna mini INS/GNSS. (Photo: SBG Systems)
The sensors work in highly dynamic and vibrating environments because their gyros operate well, changing position up to 900° per second. Similarly, their accelerometers can reach up to 40 g, with excellent behavior in vibrating environments. “We can typically install our sensors directly on the chassis of the vehicle, while lower grade sensors may require specific dampers that are complex to design and make it difficult to precisely align the sensor,” Guinamard said.
A GNSS interference-mitigation capability enables the sensors to perform in challenging GNSS environments.
With the Ellipse-D, high latitude operation is possible because it provides a dual-antenna heading that is insensitive to higher latitudes, Guinamard explained.
Saltwater-Proof. SBG Systems sensors typically have waterproof (IP68) enclosures that can deal with harsh conditions and sustain exposure to saltwater for a limited period of time. For long exposure to salt water, the company offers specific titanium enclosures. For instance, its Navsight series has a saltwater-proof inertial measurement unit.
Navsight marine solution. (Photo: SBG Systems)
The Navsight Marine Solution is a motion and navigation solution for hydrographers available as a motion reference unit (MRU), as an inertial navigation solution (INS) with embedded GNSS, and as an INS using a third-party GNSS receiver.
Navsight can be outfitted for demanding shallow- or deep-water environments to survey highly dense areas (bridges and buildings), as well as applications where only a single antenna can be used.
With the addition of the Horizon inertial measurement unit (IMU) to the Navsight line in January, which joined the Ekinox and Apogee IMUs, the line is suitable for large hydrographic vessels surveying harsh environments. The Horizon IMU is based on a closed-loop fiber-optic gyro (FOG) technology that enables ultra-low bias and noise levels, allowing robust and consistent performance.
Dust, noxious gas and loose rock near the summit makes volcanic surveying especially challenging. (Photo: Trimble)
AT VOLCANO’S EDGE
GNSS Tracks Magma on Mount Etna
Scientists seeking to better understand volcanoes are using GNSS to investigate one of the most active in the world.
Mount Etna, in eastern Sicily, Italy, has been erupting for hundreds of thousands of years. The constant activity makes it a popular tourist attraction — smoke often billows from the mountain and fiery lava spews down its sides.
Researchers flock to Mount Etna, too, to study the movement of magma — the hot fluid beneath the Earth’s surface from which rocks are formed when cooled.
To measure the vertical gradients of gravity on Mount Etna’s slopes and summit craters, geophysicists from Slovakia and Italy teamed up on a field campaign during which they used high-accuracy GNSS positioning with emphasis on accurate height measurements to collect gravimetry and topographic information.
The extreme environment and spotty cellular coverage on Mount Etna made using GNSS with real-time kinematic (RTK) or virtual reference station (VRS) a challenge. The geophysicists used the Trimble CenterPoint RTX correction service and Trimble R10 GNSS receivers to ensure reliable GNSS performance.
“On many points, especially the higher part of the volcano, Internet signals were poor or [there were] none at all,” said Juraj Papčo, a geodesist with the Earth Science Institute of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. “Only by using RTX were we able to collect real-time data. It performed well in higher elevations and difficult conditions.”
The project teams also used Trimble RTX to navigate to locations where they needed measurements. At each station, they collected static and real-time positions and later compared post-processed results with the real-time positions.
Dust, noxious gas and loose rock made approaching the summit especially challenging. Trimble RTX helped the Slovak-Italian team of geophysicists better understand volcanoes and anticipate volcanic events.
Researchers used high-accuracy GNSS positioning to collect gravimetry and topographic information. (Photo: Trimble)Prisms affixed to the track enable measurement of change and structural movement. (Photo: Topcon)
UNDER A METROPOLIS
Harsh Construction Environment Monitored
Deep beneath Paris, work is underway to expand the Metro, the city’s rapid transit system. The Grand Paris Express project encompasses a 200-kilometer-long network of railway lines — mostly underground — that will link the suburbs to the city.
The contractor responsible for monitoring construction of the first stage of the project’s infrastructure, Cementys, is using more than 100 instruments from Topcon’s MS series of robotic total stations because they can withstand the harsh construction environment.
Monitoring structural movement across the network is critical; the goal is to protect the surrounding Parisian structures and the people who live and work in them. Use of the monitors also ensures that the expensive equipment used on the project is not stolen.
Topcon’s MS Series robotic total stations continuously measure the angles and distances of prisms fixed to structures. As a result, site engineers know immediately when measurement change and structural movement occurs. The technology also includes Matrix Detection software to help increase the measurement system’s speed and accuracy. The company’s TSshield integrated security software, standard on all its total stations, provides remote locking and location positioning data to within 100 meters, depending on GPS and cellular coverage.
“We have been able to integrate this open technology perfectly into our global data management system, which also includes optical fibers sensors, vibrating wire sensors, and others,” said Cementys CEO Vincent Lamour.
Construction of the Grand Paris Express project is taking places in stages and is expected to be complete in 2030.
Photo:Position tracks from two laps of the race show that when the plane inverts and starts to track the reflected signal, the VN-300 GNSS/INS (blue trace) reverts to free inertial navigation and propagates the position based on inertial data. The trace follows a smooth trajectory through the next air gate until the GNSS data converges with the INS position. (Image: Google Earth with VectorNav Data)
ABOVE THE SEA
Flying High with Augmented Reality
The 2018 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Cannes, France, made it easier for fans to follow along. Though pilots race one at a time, the new “Ghost Plane” augmented reality imagery provided fans with a real-time representation of each pilot’s flight, which challenges their speed, precision and skill maneuvering lightweight racing planes.
The Ghost Plane is driven by onboard telemetry data gathered during flight. For a pilot’s run to be accurately represented, the onboard telemetry system has to track position, velocity and attitude (yaw, pitch and roll) through high-dynamic maneuvers and in challenging environmental conditions.
While every Red Bull Air Race track layout is different, they all include a difficult vertical turning maneuver (VTM), where pilots pass through a gate and turn 180 degrees to reverse course quickly without exceeding the g limit.
Each plane is fitted with several GNSS receivers to track the plane, but dynamic maneuvers made during the race rapidly changes which satellites the GNSS receiver can track, which typically results in a loss of position fix.
To further increase the challenge for the telemetry systems, races are commonly held over water, which can reflect GNSS signals and create significant multipath errors at low altitudes. During the VTM, the plane can experience 300°/second angular rates and 12-g accelerations, during which GNSS tracking is typically lost because the antennas no longer point to the sky.
To make the Ghost Planes possible, a VectorNav VN-300 dual-antenna GNSS/INS (inertial navigation system) couples gyroscope and accelerometer data to propagate position and velocity estimates during loss of GNSS measurements through maneuvers such as the VTM.
The VN-300 combines two GNSS receivers with a 9-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU). It couples acceleration and angular rates from the IMU with position and velocity data from the receiver using a quaternion based Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). VectorNav algorithms work in conjunction with the state estimation filter, making the VN-300 more robust and intelligent, and enabling it to reject poor GNSS data and perform accurately in high-dynamic maneuvers and challenging operating conditions.
NEW EQUIPMENT
Antenna Designed for Challenging Environments
CHC Navigation’s latest GNSS antenna is an example of a product designed specifically for harsh environments.
AT311T antenna. (Photo: CHC Navigation)
The heavy-duty CHCNAV AT311T is designed for demanding applications subject to shocks and vibrations. With advanced filtering and robust signal tracking, it provides survey-grade GNSS signals to enhance position reliability for marine applications, machine control, precision agriculture and industrial automation.
Features include multi-constellation GNSS tracking using GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou, Galileo, QZSS, IRNSS and SBAS. Its IP68 water-resistant design makes it safe to use in extreme conditions with a wide temperature range (–40°C to +85°C). Its internal stacked structure enhances performance in high-interference environments, and the 40-dB signal gains, advanced signal filtering and multipath rejection design provide superior and robust GNSS signal tracking in challenging surroundings.
One of the two solar arrays on the InSight lander dominates this view of the plain of Elysium Planum, taken Dec. 4, 2018. (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
IN OUTER SPACE
Exploring Beyond Earth
While GNSS isn’t useful on the surface of Mars, inertial navigation is a key technology for exploration of the red planet. For instance, the Northrop Grumman LN-200S sensor guided the Mars Opportunity rover, which explored Mars for 15 years until a storm struck in June 2018.
The LN 200S sensed acceleration and angular motion, with its data output used by the rover’s control systems for guidance.
The hermetically sealed unit, suitable for planetary and asteroid probes, helped position the rover’s antennae to relay photos and data to satellites. Opportunity beamed back 187,000 raw images, according to NASA.
Because IMUs don’t depend on satellites, they work well for deep space missions, Honeywell explained in a press release.
In November 2018, NASA’s InSight spacecraft landed on Mars to study the interior with a heat probe and listen for marsquakes with a seismometer. Aboard was Honeywell’s Miniature Inertial Measurement Unit (MIMU), an IMU that has been a part of Lockheed Martin’s Mars satellites and landers since 1998.
The MIMU is a three-axis strapdown device specifically designed for the satellite and deep-space-probe market (more than 500 MIMUs have been deployed throughout the solar system). It uses ring laser gyros to help control and stabilize a spacecraft during entry, descent and landing, as well as maintain orbit and payload orientation. The radiation-hardened design supports 15-year missions.
A free GPS World webinar on Nov. 21 tackles a new frontier, if not the final one, for GNSS. “Developments in Space GNSS Navigation,” sponsored by NovAtel, brings together experts from NASA, ESA, NovAtel and Spire (the CubeSat company) to discuss how they’re taking GNSS capabilities beyond Earth’s boundaries.
Navigating through space has long proven to be challenge for aerospace engineers and professionals because of the complex combination of technology and cost required for success.
However, with advancements in GNSS and receiver technology, organizations and nations around the world are increasingly interested in space exploration activities.
Today, the space industry is seeing GNSS technology used in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and highly elliptical orbit scenarios.
In this webinar, speakers from NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency), NovAtel and Spire will examine emerging trends regarding the usage of GNSS technology in the space industry, including an increasing need for situational awareness while navigating through space and the ability to service satellites while in orbit.
These experts will also provide a look into their own experiences with a variety of ambitious space projects and applications.
Speakers include:
Werner Enderle, Head of Navigation Support Office, ESA European Space Operations Center
Benjamin Ashman, Aerospace Engineer, NASA
Erin Kahr, Critical Safety Systems, NovAtel
Dallas Masters, GNSS Program Manager, Spire
Date: Thursday, November 21, 2019 Time: 1 p.m. EST / 10 a.m. PST / 7 p.m. (1900h) Central European Time
Satellite imagery company Soar is now allowing public access to its satellites that provide near-real time imagery all across Earth at 10-meter resolution per pixel.
Both the public and the media will now be able to see high-definition aerial views of anywhere on Earth to observe events as they happen. This includes but is not limited to environmental disasters such as wildfires, tsunamis, hurricanes and drought.
Governments will also be able to monitor activities such as the protests in Hong Kong, or illegal mining or deforestation.
Developed by geospatial experts, the map sources satellite images from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel, NASA’s Landsat feeds and the SuperView and Gaofen satellites.
As well as satellite content, the super-map will integrate imagery sourced from drone owners (drone pilots) around the world, who can earn passive income as the value of their imagery becomes realized. They can thus become a one-stop-shop for the collection, distribution, and monetization of mapping imagery from different sensors.
“The problem Soar is solving is that almost 80 percent of all mapping imagery is currently accessed through just one channel, which is, for the most part, reserved mostly for niche commercial use,” said Soar founder and CEO Amir Farhand. “In many cases, the general public only has access to resources that are not updated as frequently. Soar addresses these limitations by generating dynamic, ever-changing data on our platform.”
“Imagery taken by a drone user can be uploaded to social media, and may attract a few likes, or will sit idle on a hard drive,” Farhand said. “The same image uploaded to Soar contributes content to the seeding of the super-map, providing value to a global community, as well as generating income for the drone pilot.”
Soar’s Head of Growth, Tim Glover added, “Imagine if we could re-use that imagery in a way that was totally authentic, collaborative and most importantly, accessible to all. Soar allows anyone to view the Earth from above, meaning it’s easy to observe things like environmental changes, including drought, melting ice caps, industrial growth, natural disasters like volcano eruptions, just to name a few uses. The aim of Soar is to enable anyone to explore and discover our ever-changing world.”
With almost 10 petabytes of data already acquired, Soar is planning additional imagery as part of their growth strategy. Soar has already received several partnership requests from multinational organizations with excess satellite, aerial and drone content from across the globe.
In the near future, the platform will also feature additional data streams from higher resolution satellites, aerial imagery providers and both commercial and recreational drone operators globally.
The use of Soar is suitable for a wide range of industries and applications including agriculture, environmental, logistics, mining and insurance. However, since its beta launch in late 2018, the largest area of growth has been news and social media as users share imagery of landscape events from around the world.
Soar was founded in 2017 by Amir Farhand, an entrepreneur with more than 15 years of geospatial expertise. The Soar leadership team is headed by Chairman Guy Perkins, former co-founder of aerial imaging companies NearMap and Spookfish. Other key managers come from a wide range of industry sectors with varying backgrounds, including the Australian Special Forces, United States Air Force, Lockheed Martin, Rio Tinto, NBCUniversal and Amblin Entertainment.
