The vehicles in NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) program are executing their unique mission "slower, higher, longer."
The ERAST program, lead by the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., aims to develop aeronautical technologies that will lead to a new family of remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) that will fly:
SLOWER At subsonic speeds, as slow as 15 miles per hour (24.1 kilometers per hour)
HIGHER At altitudes as high as 100,000 feet (30 kilometers)
LONGER For continuous missions lasting as long as 96 hours
Such long-duration, high-altitude RPVs could be used in upper-atmospheric science missions to help collect, identify and monitor environmental data to assess global change. They also could carry telecommunications equipment to high altitudes, serving much like satellites for a fraction of the cost of putting a traditional satellite in space. With the help of the science community, the ERAST project office has outlined the following three flight profiles for future aircraft that would meet the needs of the high-altitude, remotely piloted aircraft users: 1) Centurion -- as the future vehicle will be called -- will be an ultrahigh-altitude (100,000 feet (30 kilometers)) aircraft that can accommodate a small payload (200 pounds (91 kilograms)).
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