Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: drones – Page 48

Elon Musk’s Starlink internet project continues to move forward, launch by launch.

SpaceX launched another 47 internet-beaming satellites from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Thursday morning.

Nine minutes after launch, the Falcon 9 rocket’s first stage that lifted the Starlink satellites returned to the planet, making a perfect landing on the *Just Read the Instructions* drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

## SpaceX launches 47 more Starlink satellites after supplying Ukraine with terminals.

The event marked the 11th successful landing for this specific Falcon 9 booster, tying it for the record of most flights with another Falcon 9 in the SpaceX fleet. In the past, the booster that lifted today’s payload has taken the Transporter 2 into space (June 2021), the Turksat 5A (January 2021), and launched the GPS III SV03 mission (June 2020) — in addition to seven other earlier Starlink payloads, according to SpaceX officials on the live stream of the launch.

Full Story:

Continue reading “Watch a SpaceX rocket fly for a record 11th time” | >

A series of experiments using paper airplanes reveals new aerodynamic effects, a team of scientists has discovered. Its findings enhance our understanding of flight stability and could inspire new types of flying robots and small drones.

“The study started with simple curiosity about what makes a good airplane and specifically what is needed for smooth gliding,” explains Leif Ristroph, an associate professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and an author of the study, which appears in the Journal of Fluid Mechanics. “Answering such basic questions ended up being far from child’s play. We discovered that the aerodynamics of how paper airplanes keep level flight is really very different from the stability of conventional airplanes.”

“Birds glide and soar in an effortless way, and paper airplanes, when tuned properly, can also glide for long distances,” adds author Jane Wang, a professor of engineering and physics at Cornell University. “Surprisingly, there has been no good mathematical model for predicting this seemingly simple but subtle gliding flight.”

Read more | >

Autonomous drone mapping startup Emesent has announced its latest survey-grade LiDAR payload: Hovermap ST. The lightweight, IP65-rated solution is being launched with Emesent’s new Automated Ground Control feature that, the company stresses, enables autonomous data capture in harsher environments than ever and for a wider range of use cases.

Emesent’s LiDAR payloads leverage a process called simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), in which a drone builds a map and, at the same time, localizes the drone in that map.

Read more | >

As battles erupt in Kyiv, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense appeals private drone owners to use or donate them to repel invading Russian troops.

Ukraine’s Defense Ministry has called upon citizens who own drones to use them in support of the country’s armed forces in their battle to prevent the invading Russian Army from capturing the capital, Kyiv.

“Do you own a drone? Give it to experienced pilots to use!” the post read, according to a translation in a Gizmodo report. “Do you know how to (fly) a drone? Join the joint patrol with units 112 of the separate brigade of the city of Kyiv!

Read more | >

Specialized Atlanta-based UAV consulting firm Skyfire is itself launching into aerial action with the release of its SF2 drone, which is designed and manufactured specifically for public safety and critical sector operators.

Skyfire’s entry into specialized drone manufacturing with the SF2 was motivated by the understanding, insight, and feedback it gathered in its work with hundreds of US public safety and critical sector clients as they navigated the Federal Aviation’s certification of authorization process. Relying on that information flow from diverse partners, Skyfire decided to provide solutions to shortcomings and close operational gaps it was hearing about.

Read more | >

Draganfly is celebrating a major health and safety milestone with its spraying drones disinfecting more than 500,000 seats using the company’s proprietary pathogen and surface sanitizer technology.

The company’s spraying technology was also implemented ahead of NASCAR’s June 2021 tripleheader weekend at the Nashville Superspeedway and Barrett-Jackson’s March 2021 collector car auction in Arizona.

Read more | >