[Engine noise]
On launch day before the actual launch of
the ORION takes place in Florida the IKHANA will take off from NASA Armstrong Flight Research
Center and head out to the Pacific to acquire the ORION Capsule on reentry and look at the
parachutes as they come out. So we will be at an altitude that when the ORION capsule
is coming in it will be coming towards us as it is going down.
[Radio Chatter] We are going to use the infrared camera to
acquire the vehicle as it is coming down and eventually change to the optical camera to
give better situational awareness of what is going on at splashdown.
IKHANA is a native American Choctaw word that means conscious, self-aware, and intelligent
and the reason that we chose that name for the airplane is that we were interested in
doing research in autonomous control and the ways the airplane could assist the pilot in
avoiding collisions or avoiding traffic and being able to respond to its own environment
in a safe way.
The agency has used the IKHANA UAS in several different ways. IKHANA supported the Western
States Fire Mission. The goal there was to provide situational awareness to the fire
fighters in the middle of fighting a fire and do it in almost real time manor. Something
they have not been able to have from the air in the same way.
[Radio Chatter] We have also flown fiber optic technology
on the airplane to measure the wing bending on the airplane. With the fiber they can measure
like, 100s of times more of what the wing was doing. So if you want to have the feedback
of what you want the wing to do; either by bending the wing or by bending other surfaces,
you have way more feedback by doing it this way.
[Radio Chatter] Right now we're getting ready to fly the airplane
with a research flight control system that will allow an eventual autonomous capability
of the airplane, primarily for self-separation. Our goal is to improve the safety of UAS flying
in the national air space. And if we can help the pilots on the ground controlling the remotely
piloted airplanes know where the traffic around them is and give them standard ways to separate
from that traffic this would be a great way to do that.
[Radio Chatter]