July 2, 2007 11:51 AM PDT
There are civilian uses, too, for the UAV, developed by Insitu, of Bingen, Wash.
Over several days in late June, a 40-pound civilian version of the UAV named Insight, owned by the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska at Fairbanks, logged 18 hours of flight time as part of a campaign to map the growth of wildfire fuels in one part of Alaska, Insitu said last week. In that time, the aircraft collected 30 color images per second of about 43 square miles of terrain in the Stewart Creek impact area near Eielson Air Force Base. Those images will help officials plan prescribed fires that are intended to reduce the risk of blazes being set by live-fire training exercises run by the Army and Air Force.
Photo by Kevin Engle, Geophysical Institute
