The Raytheon Coyote UAV team received the 2018 Aviation Week Laureate Award in the Defense category for Dual Use: Raytheon Coyote UAV for flying into and waiting in the eye of Hurricane Maria, allowing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to better forecast how intense the storm would be at landfall and more accurately estimate the magnitude of the storm surge.

NOAA UAS Program’s support acknowledged in the EPOCH study of East Pacific Origin and Characteristics of Hurricanes The impacts of Harvey, Irma, and Maria during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season re-emphasized the critical need for accurate operational forecasts. The combined NASA East Pacific Origins and Characteristics of Hurricanes (EPOCH) and NOAA UAS field campaign during August 2017 was the fourth campaign in a series of dual agency partnerships between NASA and NOAA to improve forecasting

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) will co-host the FAA’s 3rd annual Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Symposium on March 6-8, 2018 at the Baltimore Convention Center. The 2018 UAS Symposium provided stakeholders with the opportunity to talk face-to-face with a cross-section of government and industry representatives about regulations, research and initiatives to integrate unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS).  This year’s agenda (attached)

NOAA UAS Program conducts a Mission Concept Review in preparation for this project’s initiation. The NOAA UAS Program conducted a Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)-Shipboard Launch and Recovery of Unmanned Aerial Systems with 15 lb Payload Capabilities Mission Concept Review on February 21th to assess the Readiness Level (RL) of the UAS, sensors and application in the operational shipboard environment.  The Principle Investigator, Trish Quinn from the Pacific Marine Environment Laboratory gave a thorough briefing (attached)

NOAA UAS Program conducts a Mission Concept Review in preparation for this project’s initiation. The NOAA UAS Program conducted a Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)-Advanced UAS Sensor Development for Marine Mammal Monitoring Mission Concept Review on February 13th to assess the Readiness Level (RL) of the UAS, sensors and application in the operational fisheries environment, Pribilof Islands, Alaska.  The Principle Investigator, Katie Sweeney from the Marine Mammal Laboratory, AFSC, NOAA Fisheries gave a thorough briefing (attached) which

NOAA UAS PROGRAM AND NWS COORDINATE WITH NATIONAL AND ALASKAN STATE PARTNERS CONDUCTED UNMANNED AIRCRAFT SYSTEM (UAS) OPERATIONS. The annual spring breakup of Alaskan rivers brings the threat of flooding from ice jams that dam river channels and cause water to backup and inundate communities.  NOAA’s National Weather Service (NWS) and the Alaska Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management have monitored Alaskan rivers during breakup to provide advanced warning of flooding for several decades

Nine NOAA teams were awarded funding to explore the use of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) to capture NOAA observation requirements. The NOAA Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) Program hosted the NOAA UAS Program FY 17 “Lightning Round” Briefings on January 31st at 3 PM EST providing the nine winning teams the opportunity to brief their research, operations, provide UAS best practices and lessons learned, and project plans.  UAS Program Director, CAPT Phil Hall, led the webinar

NOAA UAS Program’s Global Hawk UAS Project for Tropic Cyclone Research is discussed during multi-line office meeting. Dr. Gary Matlock, OAR’s Deputy Assistant Administrator for Science, briefed  SHOUT’s results to the NOAA Observing Systems Council (NOSC) on January 24th with CAPT Phil Hall, UAS Program Director, and Dr. Gary Wick SHOUT’s Principle Investigator present.  Dr Matlock covered the SHOUT’s positive results including that this study demonstrated that high altitude long endurance UAS observations are feasible, affordable,

NOAA UAS Program Participates in Participates in Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Session at American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting. For the third year in a row, unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and talk of their unique applications and benefits to the meteorological community have made a big splash at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting. Making its debut in a set of back-to-back sessions during the 18th Symposium on Meteorological Observation and Instrumentation at the

NOAA UAS Program SBIR Partner Briefs Testing Results at the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Annual Meeting Data from mobile, particularly airborne, sensors have been shown to be extremely impactful relative to increasing the fidelity of NWP model output (Barwell et al. 1985, Kruus 1986, Baeda et al. 1987, Benjamin et al. 1991, Smith and Benjamin 1994, Graham et al. 2000, Schwartz et al. 2000, Zapotocny et al. 2000, Zhang et al. 2016). However, most aircraft sensing platforms do

  With a legacy of delivering reliable, robust and highly accurate small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), NOAA Atmospheric Turbulence and Diffusion Division (ATDD) of the Air Resources Laboratory has selected Black Swift Technologies (BST), a specialized engineering firm based in Boulder, CO, to integrate their SwiftCore Flight Management System with a UAV Factory Penguin BE UAV platform in support of a joint research project with the University of Tennessee Space Institute (UTSI). Chosen for its reliability, intuitive user interface and

Title: It Takes Two: NASA and NOAA’s Shared Path of Hurricane Science Flights with the Global Hawk. Time for the Research To Operations (R2O) Transition? The impacts of Harvey, Irma, and Maria during the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season re-emphasized the critical need for accurate operational forecasts. The combined NASA East Pacific Origins and Characteristics of Hurricanes (EPOCH) and NOAA UAS field campaign during August 2017 was the fourth campaign in a series of dual agency

Operational Impact of Data Collected from the Global Hawk Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) During SHOUT The primary scientific goal of the Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) Project was to determine the potential utility of observations from high-altitude, long-endurance unmanned aircraft systems such as the Global Hawk (GH) aircraft to improve operational forecasts of high-impact weather events or mitigate potential degradation of forecasts in the event of a future gap in satellite coverage. Hurricanes

Dr. Kirk Waters, PhD from NOAA Office for Coastal Management’s Applied Sciences Program led the team and review as Principle Investigator with PrecionHawk UAS supporting the effort.   The NOAA UAS Program conducted the Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS)-Based Lidar and Imagery in National Estuarine Research Reserve (NERR) Marshes Post Mission Review on November 21st to assess the Readiness Level (RL) of the UAS, sensors and application in the operational NERR environment. The UAS missions were