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Boeing Flight-Tests 2-Pound Imaging Radar Aboard ScanEagle Unmanned Aircraft
--Announcement made at Sea-Air-Space Exposition March 2008, Washington DC --
ST. LOUIS, March 18, 2008– The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA], in partnership with ImSAR
and Insitu Inc., has successfully flight-tested NanoSAR, the world’s smallest Synthetic
Aperture Radar (SAR), aboard the ScanEagle unmanned aircraft vehicle (UA) .
During the 1.5-hour flight on Jan. 7 at the Boardman, Ore. test range, ScanEagle, with
ImSAR’s NanoSAR payload installed, completed several passes over the target
area at various altitudes and ranges. The targets included vehicles, structures
and corner reflectors. Data collection onboard the ScanEagle worked as planned,
and SAR imagery was later created on the ground. The next step in flight
testing will be to create imagery aboard the UA in real time.
The
NanoSAR is a 2-pound system approximately the size of a shoebox. The weight of
standard SARs ranges from 50 to 200 pounds.
In the past,
the advantages of SARs' all-weather imaging capabilities have been the
exclusive domain of only larger unmanned aircraft. Now, even the 40-pound ScanEagle can carry both an electro-optical
or infrared camera and a SAR payload at the same time,” said Carol Wilke, ScanEagle
chief engineer for Boeing. "SAR is now at the lower end of payload weight
budgets instead of at the top.
“The
NanoSAR technology’s ability to see in hazy, cloudy, rainy or foggy conditions
is ideally suited for the maritime environment," Wilke added. "Combined
with ScanEagle’s long-endurance capability, NanoSAR offers a cost-effective
solution for customers' surveillance requirements.”
Logan Harris, chief
technology officer for ImSAR, said, “SAR is the best tool to get certain
jobs done, such as finding small vessels on the ocean. But because of
the size, weight, power and cost of SAR systems, it just hasn’t been possible
to get this capability to the warfighter on a broader scale. NanoSAR has
changed that. The NanoSAR is built on Printed Circuit Board technology that is
rugged and can be rapidly and cost-effectively manufactured.”
Download the Word Document of the complete Press Release
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