On Tuesday, October 12, 2021, Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy visited
NASA Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, where they got a first-hand look at the work being done to support wildfire management and sustainable airspace operations.
Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson, and NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy met in the
Airspace Operations Lab for a demonstration of how the NASA-developed
unmanned aircraft systems traffic management (UTM) technologies and concept has been extended to wildfire management as part of the
Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project. A live demonstration was given of the Unmanned Aerial Systems Pilot kit (UASP-kit), which is a portable airspace awareness tool designed for
U.S. Forest Service UAS operators in the field. An initial prototype of the UASP-kit recently went through its first field test at an active fire incident during the week of September 20th where researchers gathered feedback for future iterations. During the visit, Joey Mercer, the principal investigator for the STEReO project, and Kelly Boyd from the US Forest Service, were on location at California’s Caldor Fire to discuss the UASP-kit’s uses during wildland fire aerial operations.
To read more about the work NASA is doing to support wildfire management, please visit the following links.
-
NASA's Scalable Traffic Management for Emergency Response Operations (STEReO) project conducts first field test of the UASP-kit with USFS at the McCash Fire
-
At California Blazes, NASA Team Observes How Drones Fight Wildfire
