NASA/Google to Provide Critical Fire Information
NASA/Google to Provide Critical Fire Information
October 25, 2007: A combined effort from NASA, Google and the National Interagency Fire Center in the US is soon to commence as NASA launches its unmanned, fire resistant plane across Southern California to provide analysis, images and navigation of California’s bush fire emergency.
According to the NASA website, NASA will deploy its airplane know as ‘Ikhanna’ in an effort to provide a more accurate analysis of the progress of the fires. The plane which has instruments on board to navigate through heavy smoke, detect flame levels and temperatures, will take aerial images which will be transmitted via a communications satellite back to NASA Ames and consequently posted online.
By working with Google’s Earth maps, fire-fighters can analysis the images and their specific locations to get a better understanding of the situation.
Just last month NASA tested the plane to demonstrate its capabilities in providing the combined services of imaging and mapping. It was a move that NASA says anticipated the Californian disaster and prepared them to receive the call from the National Interagency Fire Centre for assistance.
In a press statement on the NASA Website Jim Brass of NASA Ames says they were well prepared for the emergency call. “We were ready to quickly deploy our teams and initiate a mission plan to over fly the fires and provide critical thermal infared intelligence on the various wildfires,” he said.
The plane will take of from NASA Dryden Flight Research Centre on a ten-hour mission capturing images from Southern California down as far as the Mexican border.
While pilots will fly the plane remotely from the base at Dryden, the fire images are processed on the Ikhan aircraft. “The images are (then) transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames where the imagery is placed on an Ames Web sites. Then the imagery is combined with Google Earth maps,” said Jim Brass, a spokesperson for NASA Ames n the NASA website.
“We will have team members at various fire campes to assist in the integration of the data and imagery derived from the AMS-WILDFIRE senors on the NASA Ikhana, while other members of the team are in place at Dryden, NASA-Amews, Google and the National Interagency Fire Centre,” said Vince Ambrosia, project principal investigator at NASA Ames.
The plane was originally built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and has been adapted for environmental science and technology research missions.