NASA Ikhana Assists SoCal Firefighters

ackthpt writes "Ikhana (a NASA drone) is primarily designed for suborbital earth sciences missions, but may be fitted out with a variety of sensors. Wednesday, Ikhana took off from Edwards Air Force Base for a 10 hour mission to observe forest fires in California, scanning the terrain from 23-25,000 feet using a variety of sensors for visible and IR light. Able to remain aloft for up to 30 continuous hours Ikhana serves up information in minutes, a process that takes hours when done by manned aircraft observation. 'The data is processed on the aircraft, up-linked to a satellite and then downloaded to a ground station. From there it's delivered to a computer server at NASA Ames. The imagery is then combined with Google Earth maps. Command center personnel can view the images on their computer screens and then delegate local firefighters accordingly.'"

Not as good as they make it out to be

[Anonymous Coward]

"Manned airplanes have to land and download the data. You may not get the data for three or four or five hours" Or you could just use a standard Sierra Wireless AirCard. Thats what the company I work for does on our airplanes up here in Canada.

Here is a Predator at Edwards, Ikhana or not?

[jerryasher]

Predator at Edwards [google.com] It's sitting next to a B-1. If you scroll around you can find three V-22s, 2 747 Shuttle Carriers, 2 more B-1s, an SR-71 [google.com], 3 B-52s, a Flying Boxcar [google.com], several warbirds, lots of jets and helicopters and three mechas, mostly disassembled and buried in the sand.

I've started at image for two days, but where's Waldo (pepper)?

Re:Now?

[timeOday]

I'm surprised weather satellites can't provide any information needed for firefighting?

data delivery

[swell]

quote "... for a 10 hour mission to observe forest fires in California, scanning the terrain from 23-25,000 feet using a variety of sensors for visible and IR light. Able to remain aloft for up to 30 continuous hours ..."

So what did it do for the remaining 20 hours? A beer run?

Displaced SoCal citizens could have used that data, we could still use it today (Saturday).

The good news is that the data wasn't entirely restricted to emergency personnel- you and I can see some of the GISified fire data here (pdf):
http://www.sdcountyemergency.com/newsreleases/10262007_1900hrs_Evac_FirePerem.pdf [sdcountyemergency.com]

and here (Google Earth application required):
http://mw1.google.com/mw-earth-vectordb/socalfires/eoc1/root.kml [google.com]