Since its beginning in 2015, Anil Nanduri has led Intel’s drone group with titles of Vice President and General Manager. Through exploring different commercial applications, Intel has done things like light shows with hundreds of so-called ‘Shooting Star’ drones flying in synchronization as well as advanced aerial surveying with their drone hardware and software applications. As a part of NASA’s Advisory Council Aeronautics Committee, Nanduri will meet regularly with NASA Administrators to offer advice.

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If you forgot about NASA after all of the noise SpaceX has made over the past months, yes, they still do exist and yes, they still do cool stuff! In a rover that is set to depart for Mars in 2020, a small drone has been developed to help the robot on its mission on the red planet. This is the first time that a flying drone has been developed for use on another planet and just like all of the other stuff launched into space, yes it has solar panels.

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NASA has contracted Black Swift Technologies out of Boulder, Colorado to design and manufacture an unmanned aerial vehicle to orbit Venus and collect data about its atmosphere. The project will last six months costing the government $125,000 which will cover the full cost of developing the drone.

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For their 2020 Mars rover mission, NASA is adding a little autonomous helicopter drone to their arsenal of instruments. Compared to a rover, more ground can be covered faster with the use of an unmanned aerial device. However, since the atmosphere is so much thinner on Mars – ground level on the red planet compares to an altitude of 100,000 feet on earth – the light-weight helicopter drone has extraordinary large blades and will only be used for a limited number of short test flights. If proven successful it may open the door to the use of more drone helicopters on future Mars missions.

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During last week’s FAA Symposium in Baltimore, Amazon, Boeing, GE, and Google announced that they are ready to start working on the development of a private Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) system for drones. Testing in conjunction with NASA is supposed to start in the next three months. The system will enable swarms of drones to fly a couple of hundred feet above the ground using cellular and web applications to avoid collisions and allow for remote tracking.

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NASA selects two drone concepts for further study, for a drone mission to launch in 2020 as the fourth part of its  New Frontiers program. The first concept is a sample return spacecraft to a comet. The second one is a drone to fly across a moon of Saturn. Both concepts, that build upon previous European Space Agency mission, were chosen for further study by NASA this week.

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