NASA Ames engineers Sally Buechel and Ted Hildum prepare to load the Autonomous Modular Scanner into the Ikhana unmanned aircraft's payload pod.

The Ikhana unmanned aircraft system, a Predator B modified for civil science and research missions, was launched from its base at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base. It flew over the major blazes burning in the Lake Arrowhead and Running Springs areas and down into San Diego County to image wildfires that raged in that area. The aircraft is controlled remotely by pilots in a ground control station at NASA Dryden.

The Ikhana was carrying the Autonomous Modular Scanner, a thermal-infrared imaging system developed at NASA's Ames Research Center in Northern California. The system is capable of peering through heavy smoke and darkness to see hot spots, flames and temperature differences, processing the imagery on-board, and then transmitting that information in near real time so it can aid fire incident commanders in allocating their firefighting resources.

The images are transmitted through a communications satellite to NASA Ames where the imagery is placed on an Ames Web site, combined with Google Earth maps, and then transmitted to the interagency fire center in Boise, Idaho, where it is then made available to incident commanders in the field.

The system was validated recently during a series of wildfire imaging demonstration missions conducted by NASA and the U.S. Forest Service in August and September.