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NASA Meatball Ikhana Photo Collection banner
 
Ikhana

With smoke from the Lake Arrowhead, CA area fires streaming in the background, NASA's Ikhana unmanned aircraft heads out on a wildfire imaging mission.

 
Photo Number: ED07-0243-37
Photo Date: October 24, 2007
 
Formats: 640x621 JPEG Image (166 KBytes)
1280x1242 JPEG Image (538 KBytes)
3000x2910 JPEG Image (2825 KBytes)
 
Photo
Description:
With smoke from the Lake Arrowhead area fires streaming in the background, NASA's Ikhana unmanned aircraft heads out on a Southern California wildfires imaging mission.
 
Project
Description:
In response to a request from the California Office of Emergency Services and the National Interagency Fire Center, NASA flew an aircraft equipped with sophisticated infrared imaging equipment in October, 2007, to assist firefighters battling several of the Southern California wildfires.

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.

 
NASA Photo by: Jim Ross
 
Keywords: Ikhana, California Office of Emergency Services, National Interagency Fire Center, Southern California wildfires, unmanned aircraft, Predator B, Lake Arrowhead, Running Springs, ground control station, Autonomous Modular Scanner, thermal-infrared imaging system, Ames Research Center, Google Earth maps, interagency fire center, Boise, Idaho, U.S. Forest Service
 


Last Modified: October 25, 2007
Responsible NASA Official: Marty Curry
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