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By NASA
NASA, along with members of the FAA and commercial drone engineers, gathered in the Dallas area May 25, 2024, to view multiple delivery drones operating in a shared airspace beyond visual line of sight using an industry-developed, NASA-originated uncrewed aircraft system traffic management system.NASA NASA’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Beyond Visual Line of Sight (UTM BVLOS) subproject aims to support the growing demand for drone flights across the globe.
Uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS), or drones, offer an increasing number of services, from package delivery to critical public safety operations, like search and rescue missions. However, without special waivers, these flights are currently limited to visual line of sight – or only as far as the pilot can see – which is roughly no farther than one mile from the operator. As the FAA works to authorize flights beyond this point, NASA is working with industry and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operationalize an uncrewed traffic management system for these operations.
NASA’s UTM Legacy
NASA’s Uncrewed Aircraft Systems Traffic Management, or UTM, was first developed at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley in 2013, and enables drones to safely and efficiently integrate into air traffic that is already flying in low-altitude airspace. UTM is based on digital sharing of each user’s planned flight details, ensuring each user has the same situational awareness of the airspace.
NASA performed a series of drone flight demonstrations using UTM concepts in rural areas and densely populated cities under the agency’s previous UTM project . And commercial drone companies have since utilized NASA’s UTM concepts and delivery operations in limited areas.
Several projects supporting NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility or AAM mission are working on different elements to help make AAM a reality and one of these research areas is automation.NASA / Graphics UTM Today
NASA research is a driving force in making routine drone deliveries a reality. The agency is supporting a series of commercial drone package deliveries beyond visual line of sight, some of which kicked off in August 2024 in Dallas, Texas. Commercial operators are using NASA’s UTM-based capabilities during these flights to share data and planned flight routes with other operators in the airspace, detect and avoid hazards, and maintain situational awareness. All of these capabilities allow operators to safely execute their operations in a shared airspace below 400 feet and away from crewed aircraft. These drone operations in Dallas are a collaboration between NASA, the FAA, industry drone operators, public safety operators, and others.
These initial flights will help validate UTM capabilities through successful flight operation evaluations and inform the FAA’s rulemaking for safely expanding drone operations beyond visual line of sight.
The agency will continue to work with industry and government partners on more complex drone operations in communities across the country. NASA is also working with partners to leverage UTM for other emerging operations, including remotely piloted air cargo delivery and air taxi flights. UTM infrastructure could also support high-altitude operations for expanded scientific research, improved disaster response, and more.
NASA UTM BVLOS
NASA’s UTM Beyond Visual Line of Site (UTM BVLOS) subproject is leading this effort, under the Air Traffic Management eXploration portfolio within the agency’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. This work is in support of NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility Mission, which seeks to transform our communities by bringing the movement of people and goods off the ground, on demand, and into the sky.
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By European Space Agency
A newly devised procedure to de-ice Euclid's optics has performed significantly better than hoped. Light coming in to the visible ‘VIS’ instrument from distant stars was gradually decreasing due small amounts of water ice building up on its optics. Mission teams spent months devising a procedure to heat up individual mirrors in the instrument’s complex optical system, without interfering with the finely tuned mission’s calibration or potentially causing further contamination. After the very first mirror was warmed by just 34 degrees, Euclid's sight was restored.
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By HubbleSite
This pair of NASA Hubble Space Telescope pictures shows the appearance of a mysterious burst of light that was detected on February 21, 2006, brightened over 100 days, and then faded into oblivion after another 100 days. The source of the outburst remains unidentified. The event was detected serendipitously in a Hubble search for supernovae in a distant cluster of galaxies. The light-signature of this event does not match the behavior of a supernova or any previously observed astronomical transient phenomenon in the universe.
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