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  • [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]

[Engine noise]

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