Anna Forrester
NASA and its partners General Atomics, Honeywell International and the Federal Aviation Administration are conducting a series of tests under the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System program.
The space agency said Tuesday the team will perform tests on several UAS at the Armstrong Flight Research Center through July.
Previous tests under the first phase have used an Ikhana aircraft with a sense-and-avoid system and a Beech C90 King Air as “intruder” to demonstrate encounters between autonomous aircraft, other air traffic and air traffic controllers.
“We are excited to continue our partnership… to collect flight test data that will aid in the development of standards necessary to safely integrate these aircraft into the National Airspace System,” said Laurie Grindle, UAS-NAS project manager at Armstrong.
The second phase of the flight test series will commence in August and use a T-34 aircraft with a proof-of-concept control and non-payload communications system, NASA said.
