Aircraft tracking disasters

US scientists are putting into use unmanned aircraft specializing in conducting research flights to monitor disasters.

For a long time, this type of robot aircraft was used in the military field in some countries. Currently, they begin to be put into scientific research. According to researchers from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), they could lead to a revolution in managing the earth's system.

Robot aircraft can enter difficult, dangerous and toxic places with humans with 3 main purposes: predicting the intensity of storms, tracking the Arctic melting phenomenon in the summer, monitoring storms in the Pacific region and into the western United States.

Unmanned aircraft can fly into dangerous areas of the storm to collect data (Photo: TTO)

Another advantage of this aircraft is that it is possible to sample continuously with the data acquisition device such as humidity, temperature and wind speed.

In November 2007, NOAA used the first unmanned aerial vehicle called Aerosonde to monitor hurricanes. They oversee Hurricane Noel using the ' integrated observation concept' that combines the acquisition of data from Aerosonde and satellites.

Aerosonde is capable of operating for a long period of low range. It can fly continuously for 1 day at 129 km / h with a transport volume of several kilograms. There is also another type of NASA unmanned aircraft, the Global Hawk, that can fly for 30 hours at a speed of 556 km / h and can carry 907 kg.

Scientists say they will continue to study other models of unmanned aircraft to perform various tasks. In the future, they will conduct many unmanned flights to monitor climate change affecting seals as well as monitoring fishing, preserving the earth's biosphere reserves and checking Investigating volcanic regions .

MINH ANH