{"id":65650,"date":"2018-03-23T17:17:44","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T09:17:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/black-swift-and-nasa-to-advance-agricultural-drone-tech\/"},"modified":"2018-03-23T17:17:44","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T09:17:44","slug":"black-swift-and-nasa-to-advance-agricultural-drone-tech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/black-swift-and-nasa-to-advance-agricultural-drone-tech\/","title":{"rendered":"Black Swift and NASA to Advance Agricultural Drone Tech"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n<p><strong>Black Swift Technologies<\/strong> announced the expansion of a pathfinder mission with <strong>NASA\u2019s<\/strong> Goddard Space Flight Center to develop enhanced multi-angular remote sensing techniques using small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). According to Black Swift Technologies, these autonomous platforms can more effectively and efficiently monitor crop health and growth monitoring through the use of a narrow spectral band (centered at 531 nm) used to derive vegetation photosynthesis related indices by tracking seasonally changing pigment ratios and photosynthetic rates not capable with established greenness indices, including the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index&nbsp;(NDVI).<\/p>\n<p>The pathfinder mission, called Multi AngLe Imaging Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function Small-UAS (MALIBU), uses Black Swift\u2019s most advanced small UAS, the Black Swift S2, to capture multi-angle reflectance measurements for land surface studies using multispectral imagers, oriented at different viewing angles. MALIBU\u2019s primary subsystem \u2014 a multi-angular sensor array based on the Tetracam Mini-Multiple Camera Array\u2019s (MCA) imaging system \u2014 generates science-quality reference data sets suitable for calibration and validation activities supporting NASA\u2019s flagship Earth science missions.<\/p>\n<p>For nearly 30 years, NASA has been using satellite remote sensors to measure and map the density of vegetation over the Earth. Using the <strong>National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration\u2019s<\/strong> (NOAA) Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR), scientists have been collecting images of our planet\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBy enabling increased understanding of surface directional reflectance variability at sub-pixel resolution, MALIBU will allow NASA missions to assess and improve the retrieval of reflectance-based biogeophysical properties,\u201d NASA stated.<\/p>\n<p>MALIBU will also provide users with highly accurate imagery of crop status, plant vigor, growth monitoring, pest and disease detection \u2014 essential knowledge and data for evaluating crop development, yield maximization, and production efficiency.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe goal of MALIBU is to capture timely and accurate in-situ data at a fraction of the cost of traditional NASA airborne science platforms,\u201d says Jack Elston, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Black Swift Technologies. \u201cBy measuring land biophysical parameters from a cost-effective, repeatable small UAS platform, MALIBU complements NASA\u2019s satellite observations while significantly reducing the logistical and technical complexities of manned aircraft operations in remote geographical regions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Black Swift Technologies announced the expansion of a pathfinder mission with NASA\u2019s Goddard Space Flight Center to develop enhanced multi-angular remote sensing techniques using small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). According to Black Swift Technologies, these autonomous platforms can more effectively and efficiently monitor crop health and growth monitoring through the use of a narrow spectral [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65650"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}