NASA Drone And the SensorWeb to Meet Societal Needs
Great article on Drones Raise Safety Issues as Service Roles Multiply in the Washington Post today. NASA Ames Predator to be flown from Dryden is called the IKHANA and will join the SensorWeb this summer as part of a multi-asset collaboration to fight wild fires. Several NASA satellites will be tasked in a joint effort.
Hot areas on the ground will be detected by the MODIS instruments. These pixels will be matched against reported fires in the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) database.
An analyst will submit fire coverage requests and the system will autonomously task EO-1, ASTER and IKHANA based on asset availability, schedules and predicted cloud coverage.
Work flows will task the assets and process the collected raw data based on precise requirements from the user. Web services provided by JPL and other universities across the Country will be orchestrated to produce final imagery right to the desktop and potentially to the Firefighters on the Ground.