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Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington                March 24, 2003
(Phone: 202/358-1979)

Alan Brown
Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif.
(Phone: 661/276-2665)

Patti Bird
Scaled Composites, LLC, Mojave, Calif.
(Phone: 661/824-4541)

NOTE TO EDITORS:  N03-33

MEDIA INVITED TO VIEW UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLE FLIGHT 
DEMONSTRATIONS

     News media will have an opportunity April 3, 2003, to 
see flight demonstrations of collision-avoidance systems 
being developed to enable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to 
fly safely in civil airspace shared with piloted aircraft.

NASA has sought to use UAVs in scientific and commercial 
applications, particularly to study the Earth's environment 
with high-altitude long-endurance UAVs. The full potential of 
UAVs cannot be realized, however, until they demonstrate the 
ability to operate safely and routinely within the existing 
air-traffic management system.

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, Edwards, Calif., in 
cooperation with Scaled Composites, LLC, Mojave, Calif., has 
been conducting flight demonstrations of collision-avoidance 
systems necessary to achieve the "equivalent level of safety" 
of a piloted aircraft. The ability to sense and avoid 
conflict is a key step toward allowing UAVs to fly routinely 
and reliably in the national civil airspace. A series of 
flight evaluations of a "Detect, See and Avoid" system that 
can detect "non-cooperative" aircraft without operating 
transponders is scheduled for the first week of April near 
Mojave, Calif. 

As with a prior flight series last year near Las Cruces, 
N.M., that focused on "cooperative" transponder-equipped 
aircraft the primary test aircraft will be Scaled Composites' 
Proteus. For this series, the Proteus will be equipped with a 
35 GHz radar system intended to detect any approaching 
aircraft on a potential collision course, regardless of 
whether the intruder is equipped with an operating 
transponder. 

The Proteus and a variety of target aircraft, ranging from a 
hot-air balloon to a high-speed NASA F/A-18 jet, will fly 22 
different simulated-conflict scenarios over a three-day 
period. During the flight demonstrations, Proteus will be 
controlled remotely by a pilot in a ground station. Radar 
data will be relayed to the ground station via either a line-
of-sight telemetry link or an over-the-horizon satellite 
link, and the ground pilot will command the Proteus to change 
course as needed. 

News media representatives will have the opportunity to view 
the flight demonstrations and speak with project engineers 
and pilots on Thursday, April 3, beginning at 10 a.m. Pacific 
time at Scaled Composites' Hangar 77 at the Mojave Airport. 
Representatives of NASA, Scaled Composites and Modern 
Technology Solutions Inc., Alexandria, Va., will be available 
to brief reporters and respond to their questions. In 
addition, media representatives will have an opportunity to 
view the ground station in action during a flight, as well as 
most of the aircraft being flown in the demonstrations. 
Background materials, including B-roll video for television 
journalists, will be available.

Media representatives planning to attend should contact 
either Patti Bird at Scaled Composites at (661) 824-4541 or 
Alan Brown at Dryden at (661) 276-2665, no later than April 1 
for accreditation, security clearance and directions to the 
site. All media representatives must be U.S. citizens.

-end-

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