Greased Lightning! NASA Drone Advances Unmanned Craft

A large, 10-engine drone dubbed "Greased Lightning" correctly completed a sequence of flight assessments lately, paving the manner for brand spanking new styles of unmanned vehicles that might in the future carry humans.

earlier this spring, NASA engineers flew the so-known as GL-10 (the "GL" stands for "Greased Lightning") prototype drone at a navy base located approximately two hours faraway from the organization's Langley studies middle in Virginia.

GL-10 has a ten-foot-lengthy (3 meters) wingspan and 10 engines: eight on the wings and  at the tail. The sixty two-lb. (28 kilograms) drone can take off vertically like a helicopter, however in the air it flies more like an airplane. destiny versions of the drone can be used for a spread of applications, the researchers stated.

"it may be used for small package deal transport or vertical takeoff and landing, [and] long-persistence surveillance for agriculture, mapping and different packages," bill Fredericks, an aerospace engineer on the Langley research center, stated in a assertion. "A scaled-up model — a great deal large than what we are checking out now — would make additionally a outstanding one- to four-character-size non-public air automobile."

Over the route of 5 flight exams, the drone was capable of take off and hover like a helicopter, before demonstrating that it can additionally fly like a conventional plane. Now, the researchers are analyzing approaches to make the drone more aerodynamically green, Fredericks stated.

The GL-10 drone is the today's in a series of prototypes used to develop the idea. Engineers on the Langley research center built 12 prototypes, ranging in size from 5 lbs. (2.3 kg) to fifty five lbs. (25 kg), with each successive model getting toward a real plane's weight and design.

"every prototype helped us solution technical questions even as keeping costs down," aerospace engineer David North stated in a statement. "We did lose some of the early prototypes to 'hard landings' as we learned the way to configure the flight-control machine. but we found some thing from every loss and have been capable of maintain transferring ahead."

similarly to being capable of take off in tight locations, the GL-10 is a quiet flier because its engines are battery-powered. NASA describes the drone as quieter than a neighbor the usage of a gasoline-powered-motor garden mower within the backyard next door.

NASA engineers will retain to tweak the layout of the GL-10 drone, consistent with organisation officers, and earlier this month, the prototype became displayed on the affiliation for Unmanned motors structures worldwide's 2015 convention, in Atlanta.