As part of NASA’s project to integrate UAS into the National Airspace System (NAS), General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. (GA-ASI) is partnering with NASA to conduct a demonstration flight. 

Scheduled for 2020, the demonstration will seek to address some of the challenges that prevent routine commercial UAS operations in the NAS today. These challenges include development, integration, and certification of UAS, as well as the technologies needed for safe operation with other manned and UAS traffic in the NAS.

“NASA and GA-ASI have a shared goal of seeing UAS fly safely and unencumbered in the NAS,” says Linden Blue, CEO, GA-ASI.

“GA-ASI has worked with NASA for more than five years on this goal and we’re excited to participate in their next set of demonstrations.”

The Critical Design Review was completed on Sept. 18. A variety of enabling technologies will be demonstrated, including Detect and Avoid (DAA) and Command and Control (C2) datalink systems, which are aligned with recently-published RTCA standards, GA-ASI notes. 

During the demonstration, GA-ASI’s MQ-9B SkyGuardian Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA) will showcase its ability to provide various commercial and public services using onboard sensors, as well as other ‘virtual sensors’ that it could carry in the future. Some of the services include inspections of hundreds of miles of rail, energy pipeline, powerline and canal infrastructure, agriculture monitoring and topological surveys, and wildfire and flood monitoring.

GA-ASI and NASA’s flight objectives will be supported by the city of San Diego under the UAS Integration Pilot Program (IPP). San Diego’s UAS IPP team will connect GA-ASI with local customers of the survey opportunities that this portion of the demo will offer.

The highlight of the flight will be public infrastructure surveys conducted above the city.

The basis for verification and validation of the RTCA DO-365 and DO-366 technical standards for DAA—published in 2017 by the RTCA—were flight tests on NASA's Ikhana, which is a GA-ASI-produced Predator B/MQ-9 UAS.

In June 2018, GA-ASI’s DAA system was the crucial technology that allowed NASA to fly the Ikhana for 2.5 hours through the NAS, as it took off from Southern California and flew through multiple airspace classes at various altitudes and required communications with several air traffic control centers. Equipped with the DAA system, Ikhana was able to meet the intent of the FAA’s 14 CFR 91.113(b) requirement to “see and avoid” other aircraft, which allows a large UAS to fly without a chase plane for the first time in certain classes of airspace.

NASA notes that it initiated the Systems Integration and Operationalization (SIO) project, which will result in several flight demonstrations that focus on different types of UAS and their flight missions. GA-ASI’s demonstrations will conduct commercial missions above 10,000 feet. NASA’s SIO includes two additional partnerships that demonstrate small/medium sized UAS at lower altitudes.