HAPSMobile plans to fly a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS) over Hawaii, Amazon petitions for drone delivery exemptions, NASA plans to test UAS traffic management in Texas, researchers find that drones are better than people studying whales, a female drone pilot seeks to encourage women, and drones that provide medical assistance.
Japanese drone company HAPSMobile has a waiver to fly a solar-powered UAV over Lanai. The HAWK30 will act as a stratospheric telecommunications platform – a High Altitude Platform Station, also called a High Altitude Pseudo Satellite. The project is a collaboration between HAPSMobile, the University of Hawaii, and the Pan-Pacific UAS Test Range Complex which is managed by the University of Alaska Fairbanks. AeroVironment is HAPSMobile’s aircraft development partner for the HAWK30.
In related news, see HAPSMobile Working Together with Facebook to Accelerate the Adoption of HAPS.
Amazon has filed a 29-page petition with the FAA requesting approval to use their MK27 delivery drone before getting a certificate of airworthiness. Amazon would like to fly BVLOS and they ask for exemptions from certain aviation regulations that are more applicable to manned aircraft. The petition says delivery drones will fly autonomously but with one operator for each drone in flight. Eventually, Amazon would like to have one operator for multiple drones “subject to FAA approval based on flights and simulations that demonstrate required levels of safety.”
The FAA will take public comments on the petition until August 28, 2019. See Petition for Exemption; Summary of Petition Received; Amazon Prime Air in the Federal Register.
NASA selected the Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi’s Lone Star UAS Center of Excellence & Innovation as a nationwide drone testing site. Testing will focus on urban UAS traffic management and they plan to close or restrict access to several downtown streets.
New Zealand researchers found that small, multi-rotor UAVs are better than expert observers on research vessels. When it comes to surveying and studying humpback whales, the drones captured some social activities not detected by the observer and there was no observable effect on the whales’ behavior. See Insights into the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to investigate the behavior of humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) in Vava’u, Kingdom of Tonga.
