Robotic Scout To Survey Arctic Ice

Posted by Zonk on Sunday September 16, 2007 @09:41AM from the here-robot-birdie dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "The Meridian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a single-engine research aircraft with fixed landing gear designed by engineers at the University of Kansas. According to Technology Review, it will be used to see what happens beneath the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Two units are currently being built for a cost of about 3 million US dollars. The Meridian will fly for up to 13 hours over a distance of 1,750 kilometers. The first flight over Greenland is forecast for next summer, and a second flight will take place over the Antarctic later in 2008."

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Re:CReSIS by fuego451 · 2007-09-16 16:36 · Score: 2, Interesting

Perhaps you can answer this question. Did they consider using a NOAA aircraft for this project? If so, why did they reject the idea? I would think NOAA's P3-Orion would be well suited for this job (they hunted Russian submarines over hundreds of miles of open ocean in the Bering Straits at low level in all kinds of weather) and, the information being gathered very useful to N0AA, the government might offer free or reasonable use of the aircraft.