Unmanned Vehicles

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg announced Thursday his social networking company just finished building an unmanned aerial system that can “beam down Internet connectivity from the sky.”It’s called Aquila, and demonstrates not only solar-powered flight, but a new way to connect to the Internet.The project is part of Internet.org, whose mission is to get the Web to […]

An airspace system for unmanned aerial vehicles – perhaps with flight plans and air traffic control – is the topic at a symposium this week hosted by NASA. The agency and the Silicon Valley chapter of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International metwith interested businesses at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California. […]

Lockheed Martin Flight Services is stepping up UAS awareness with its recently introduced unmanned traffic management (UTM) service. Aimed at increasing situational awareness when it comes to sharing the airspace with commercial drone operations, UTM includes an evolving set of functions and services — including a simplified and automated UAS NOTAM filing process, online graphics […]

The nation’s first FAA-approved package deliveries by unmanned aerial system – a sign of things to come – took place Friday as a series of short test flights that took medicine to a rural health clinic in Virginia. The event, conducted by NASA’s Langley Research Center and Flirtey Inc., an Australian company, demonstrated the potential […]

A small boomerang-shaped aircraft that will go for a test launch later this year could be the first unmanned aerial system to glide over the surface of Mars, if NASA’s project comes to fruition. The Prandtl-m prototype’s test, one of three in the planning stages, will include a launch from a high-altitude balloon at about […]

The other day, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing a little remedial work on my quadcopter after an unfortunate encounter with a tree. A neighbor, who happens to own a Cessna 170, dropped by and after eyeballing the drone for a few seconds, said, “I’d win.” Say again? “I’d win if I hit […]

A European defense company had a successful test using a laser weapon to track and take down an unmanned aerial system, opening up a host of potential anti-drone uses. MBDA Deutschland, which designs guided missile systems as well as high-energy laser weapons, announced this week it maneuvered a small drone at its test site in […]

FAA rules on commercial use of unmanned aircraft systems will be on the books within a year, officials told a congressional panel Wednesday. But it remains to be seen whether the pending regulations will meet the timeline and the needs of companies like Amazon, which wants to offer consumers 30-minute package deliveries with drones. According […]

Diamond Aircraft’s Austria headquarters is well along with a third-generation hybrid-drive electric aircraft design that it hopes will serve as a certification template for future electric aircraft. The new airplane is based on a DA40 composite airframe, but rather than a geared conventional prop driven by a diesel engine, the aircraft will have a single […]

If it sometimes seems that the entire aerospace industry is given over to developing ways to plant cameras in the sky to spy on people and things, it’s probably because the entire aerospace industry is given over to developing ways to plant cameras in the sky to spy on people and things. Although the actual […]