Wearing their astronaut wings, SpaceShipTwo test pilots Rick Sturckow and Mark Stucky face the cameras as Virgin Galactic’s billionaire founder, Richard Branson, flashes a thumbs-up sign. (FAA / Virgin Galactic Photo)
Last December’s test flight, piloted by Mark “Forger” Stucky and Rick “CJ” Sturckow in the SpaceShipTwo Unity rocket plane, was nearly as historic. It rose to an altitude of 51.4 miles, exceeding the 50-mile benchmark that’s used by the U.S. military and the Federal Aviation Administration for conferring astronaut wings.
A video view from Fortem Technologies’ DroneHunter aircraft shows the targeting of an unauthorized drone. (Fortem / Today Show)
Fortem Technologies, a Utah-based venture that makes drones as well as radar detection systems, wants to be in on a drone-hunting test to be conducted during Sunday’s Super Bowl in Atlanta.
The test could turn into a high-tech matchup that parallels the football face-off between the New England Patriots and the Los Angeles Rams.
The Federal Aviation Administration has issued draft regulations that would smooth the way for drones to fly at night and over groups of innocent bystanders.
Such operations are already technically allowed, but only with a waiver or an exemption. If the proposed regulations go into effect, drone flights at night and over people could become more routine.
Looser limits could also bring America closer to the day when companies such as Amazon and Walmart routinely deliver shipments via drone.
Chao said the easing of limits on drone flights “will help communities reap the considerable economic benefits of this growing industry and help our country remain a global technology leader.”
A drone flies over a New York test site. (NUAIR Alliance Photo via NASA / Eric Miller)
Hundreds of flights have been canceled and tens of thousands of airline passengers have been stranded because of the buzz of unauthorized drones over London’s Gatwick Airport — demonstrating how disruptive a simple aerial strategy can be.
Military forces have been called up to hunt down the elusive drone operator, and the crisis has prompted calls to tighten up flight restrictions near Britain’s airport. But on that score, U.S. airports appear to be in a better position to guard against drone disruption.
In more sensitive areas, such as the National Capital Region around Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, restrictions are in force within a much wider radius — ranging from 15 to 30 miles, depending on the type of activity.
Sea-Tac spokesman Perry Cooper told GeekWire that the airport’s operations team hasn’t had any reports of drone incidents, and that it works in collaboration with the FAA on drone monitoring.
The FAA, meanwhile, says that it works with the Department of Homeland Security, the lead agency in drone security issues.
In October, language written into FAA reauthorization legislation gave Homeland Security and the Justice Department the authority to counter the use of drones for “nefarious purposes.”
An artist’s conception shows an urban air mobility environment, trafficked by air vehicles with a variety of missions and with or without pilots. (NASA Illustration / Lillian Gipson)
The rise of air mobility options ranging from delivery drones to air taxis and flying cars is shaping up as the biggest thing to hit aviation since the introduction of jet engines, NASA’s top official on aeronautics says.
“I happen to believe that this is a revolution coming in aviation,” Jaiwon Shin, NASA’s associate administrator for aeronautics, told a Seattle audience this week. “But if we do not methodically practice our best practices and all the know-how in the aviation field, this could become a total disaster.”
To avoid that total disaster, NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration have set up a process called the Urban Air Mobility Grand Challenges, modeled in part on the DARPA Grand Challenges that set the stage for autonomous ground vehicles more than a decade ago.
A rendering of the proposed Spaceport Colorado at Front Range Airport in Adams County. (Spaceport Colorado Illustration)
Colorado’s Front Range Airport is getting a new name — the Colorado Air and Space Port — thanks to the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval of a spaceport license. The facility, six miles southeast of Denver International Airport in Adams County, won’t be used for vertical rocket launches. Instead, it’s approved for horizontal takeoff-and-launch operations like the procedures planned by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Stratolaunch venture.
Pilot projects will send drones where no drones have gone before. (Aerix Photo)
The U.S. Department of Transportation has selected 10 state, local and tribal governments to oversee pilot projects that will go where no drones have gone before. But this time around, Amazon has been grounded.
The projects are meant to help set a course for ever-expanding drone operations over the next three years.
“Data gathered from these pilot projects will form the basis of a new regulatory framework to safely integrate drones into our national airspace,” Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao said today in a news release.
The FAA wants to give commercial drones freer rein. (Aerix Photo)
The city of Seattle, King County, Boeing, KING 5 and Tukwila’s police department are among more than 2,500 organizations and individuals who have registered their interest in experiments that could lead to routine drone deliveries, aerial night patrols and other advanced operations involving unmanned aerial systems.
One big name is missing from the Federal Aviation Administration’s list, which was published this week. It’s Amazon, the Seattle-based online retailer that’s been working on its own drone delivery system for years.
The fact that Amazon isn’t mentioned as an “interested party” doesn’t mean Amazon is uninterested: Registering isn’t a requirement for participating in the UAS Integration Pilot Program, which the FAA set up to push the envelope for drone operations.
Being on the list of interested parties merely serves as a signal that the registrant wants to join a team that’ll be put together by governmental entities on a different list. That list of “lead applicants” has not been published.
An Amazon delivery drone descends during a test run in England. (Amazon via YouTube)
The Federal Aviation Administration today followed up on a White House mandate to speed progress toward drone deliveries by laying out a streamlined plan for approving more advanced operations.
Many of those operational features — such as flying beyond a drone operator’s visual line of sight, night flights and flying over people — are considered crucial for the drone delivery schemes being tested by Amazon as well as Google’s parent company and other ventures.
Blue Origin’s New Shepard spaceship lifts off for a test in January 2016. (Credit: Blue Origin)
When senators asked executives from Blue Origin and other commercial space ventures what they could do to help them at a Senate hearing today, they received an unusual reply: Give more money to the regulators at the Federal Aviation Administration.
“”It may be rare for companies to be pushing for more funding for their regulators, but we really think this is a case where it could be a good investment for the country,” Virgin Galactic CEO George T. Whitesides said during a Senate space subcommittee hearing.
The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation, also known as AST, is responsible for regulating and encouraging development of private-sector launch companies such as Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin and SpaceX.
AST’s budget for the current fiscal year is just a little less than $20 million, or just a little more than 0.1 percent of the FAA’s total budget of $15.9 billion.
