The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, is introducing commercial UAVs or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles into its data collection mix to help them study the weather. These super sophisticated systems on board will have unbelievable capabilities to study the weather patters and protect the American People. These NOAA UAVs will be designated UAS or Unmanned Aerial Systems and will have some of the latest technologies included in them. In fact they will be mini weather stations in the sky. Indeed not just your average mini-weather station either, they will be capable of operating at high-altitude or some 52,000 feet above sea level for up to 30 plus hours and able to replay or feed information to satellites via LOS or the ground based mobile units via UHF. These systems will be able to run grid patterns with other UAS or alone to track severe weather or collect data. The will have combined ozone photometers and gas chromatograph instruments, ocean color and PMVS passive microwave vertical sounders, Airborne maritime survelliance electro optical infrared (EOIR) gyro stabilized imaging sensors, directed Geo-reference digital high definition cameras, video feed, research environment for vehicle-embeded analysis on Linux or (REVEAL) and all this will sit inside the nose cone of the UAS. It is simply awesome that the NOAA is using the best technology and leveraging all this to help protect the American People. Such systems will be able to feed constant reliable data to forecast, study, track and better understand our climate and weather. The NOAA clearly tops the list of having one of the greatest programs in our government. Kudos to the NOAA for keeping us safe both night and day. |
