Program Overview
The Ikhana (Predator-B) UAV flight research project is an initiative of the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and is designed to support NASA’s High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) objectives. Missions to be hosted on this aircraft include collecting data that allow scientists to better understand and model our environmental conditions and climate, increasing the intelligence of unmanned aircraft to perform advanced missions, demonstrating technologies that enable new manned and unmanned aircraft capabilities, and using a multi-spectral wildfire sensor over remote areas of the western United States.

With Ikhana, SRG team members effectively gather mission requirements, evaluate new and emerging technologies, integrate unique technologies into existing systems to provide innovative solutions, design and develop unique state-of-the-art technology for emerging systems, and support flight operations for long missions in remote and rural areas that require high levels of autonomy to reduce human operator workload.

Sensor types, including day-night, and long-duration surveillance experience, are applicable to border patrol missions and law enforcement operations such as illicit drug detection.

Ikhana will be flown primarily on Earth science missions under the Earth Science Capability Demonstrations project at NASA Dryden. It will also be used for advanced aircraft systems research and technology development. All of the aircraft’s airborne and ground control systems are mobile, making Ikhana ideal for remote studies. Ikhana is instrumental in NASA’s need to collect data over day-night time cycles and over long distances in remote areas, which drives the need for a long-duration unmanned aircraft. This capability will overcome crew duty requirements that restrict piloted aircraft to 10 hours or less of mission duration.

Unmanned aircraft are also more suitable for remote missions in rural or remote regions where the lack of nearby emergency landing locations increases the risk for piloted missions.

• Designed, developed, and tested a third generation flight control computer known as the Airborne Research Testbed System (ARTS III); and
• Designed, developed, and tested a ground control station that enables a ground-based human operator to have full authority control of the aircraft, or to engage autonomous systems when desired to provide operator workload relief for common flight tasks.