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Robotic Scout To Survey Arctic Ice
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."
get tagging, this is your daily dose of roland. if you are unlucky, there might be another roland story in a couple hours.
That may be true, but maybe it is this kind of thinking that lies at the root of the problem. A single car trip (drone flight) doesn't make a difference. If enough people think like this (it seems that currently a lot of people still do) and you've got a pretty big problem at your hands. In this special case however there may be a point to be made of the reward in understanding justifying the cost in environmental impact.
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Technology Review - Published by MIT
Thursday, September 13, 2007
A Robotic Polar Aircraft
To gain a better understanding of ice-sheet disintegration, Kansas researchers are building an unmanned plane with cutting-edge radar for better mapping.
By David Talbot
Seeing beneath the vast Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets--and, in particular, seeing whether any water sits between ice and ground--is critical to understanding how fast ice might slide into the sea in the future. But many areas are still uncharted territory. Now, engineers at the University of Kansas, in Lawrence, are in the final stages of constructing, from scratch, an unmanned aircraft that will carry ground-penetrating radar and other sensors.
The project should greatly accelerate the pace of mapping without risking the lives of human pilots who now fly limited missions across parts of the ice sheets. "We can cut costs for large-scale mapping projects, increase the range, and reduce dangers," says Rick Hale, an associate professor of aerospace engineering and leader of the effort.
The plane will fly in conditions that would be too risky for humans, and it will fly lower than would be safe for human pilots, enabling sensors to bring back sharper pictures. The aircraft's key instrument, a 125-pound radar unit, will fire signals through kilometers of ice at several frequencies. Software will then analyze the timing of returning signals to create a clear picture of subsurface ice layers, water pockets, and the contours of the underlying bedrock or soil.
To be sure, there's plenty of unmanned aircraft already out there, such as the Predator, made by General Atomics. But while a Predator might cost around $30 million, Hale's team is working with a National Science Foundation budget of around $2 million. And not just any old plane will do: this aircraft needs to work in bitterly cold and extremely remote polar locations, function far from communications centers, and carry specific kinds of gear.
Hale's team is giving the aircraft three means of communication. The first will allow humans to remotely control takeoff and landing. The second will allow radio-frequency communications when the aircraft is near a base camp. The third means enables satellite communications when the aircraft might be as far as 600 kilometers away from the nearest camp. The plane's wings--which have a span of about 26 feet--are being designed to have de-icing capability, and heaters will prevent the electronics from failing in the extreme cold.
The aircraft, called Meridian, is part of a larger effort at the University of Kansas's Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets. Together with groups at other institutions, the Kansas team is pushing technology advancements to get a better fix on ice melt rates, ice thicknesses, and the accelerating rate at which glaciers are moving toward the ocean, which could accelerate the rate of sea-level rise.
The aircraft will leverage a powerful radar technology honed at the university. The radar, developed jointly with other institutions, is unique in its ability to provide a detailed picture of ice layers and, in particular, the boundary between ice and ground, which is helpful in efforts to understand how fast ice sheets might slide into the ocean. "Basically, our radar can see deeper, and with better resolution, than any of the other competitors out there at the moment," says Claude Laird, a research scientist at the University of Kansas who used the system on an expedition in Greenland this summer. The radar was used on an overland expedition and to help choose the site for an ice-core drilling expedition next year.
If all goes well, Meridian will make its maiden flight on Greenland next summer, followed by a tour of duty later in the year, during the Antarctic summer, says Hale.
Copyright Technology Review 2007.
You can't take the sky from me...
The fuselage plugs arrived here a few weeks ago, and they look great. I believe they were made by Scaled Composites. Dr. Hale has done a fantastic job leading the aerospace side of this project. This aircraft design and development is being done by KU. Design verification is even done with software from Lawrence based DARcorporation, a spinoff of the University of Kansas with strong ties to their Aerospace Engineering department. And the first two aircraft will be manufactured at KU. Not to neglect anyone, the EECS department's team has spent many years working on the radar (I knew guys six years ago working on ground penetrating radar here) and its prospects are looking good. This is definitely a project that KU and Lawrence should be proud of.
A lot of time and effort from bright students and researchers has gone into the CReSIS project, its good to see that it has been noticed.
Seeing as the planes will be launched in the summer, when daylight hours are the longest, why not refit that solar-powered plane that flew 52 hours straight (http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/10/1917254) for cold-weather flight and mount the survey equipment on it as well? I assume that the researchers don't need the plane to fly for more than a full day at a time. Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?
Unless maybe the sun is too low in the sky for solar panels to get enough power?
No idea, a lot would depend upon the time of year, of course. But when you're sending a multi-million-dollar aircraft over a few thousand square miles of ice, you would probably want a more reliable power system. I don't know how much power the radar equipment on the thing needs, but that alone would probably eliminate a solar-powered craft.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Scientist: You found something? Engineer: Yes, my lord. Scientist: (studying the image on the console screen) That's it. The Rebels are there. Engineer: My lord, there are so many uncharted settlements. It could be smugglers, it could be... Scientist: That is the system. And I'm sure Skywalker is with them. Set your course for the Hoth system. General Veers, prepare your men.