This is a picture of the Pathfinder UAV. It was manufactured by AeroVironment. It weighs 540 pounds and has a 98.4 foot wingspan!
Courtesy of NASA
What Do Coffee and Lightning Have in Common?
News story originally written on May 18, 2001
Do they both wake your parents up? Coffee and
lightning have one more thing in common. They will be studied by NASA's unmanned aerial vehicles or UAV's during the next few years!
A UAV is a vehicle that flys in the sky, but there is no pilot onboard. The vehicle is piloted from the ground. You may have seen someone playing with a remote control plane...well, that is a UAV!
NASA is using a UAV to study coffee farms in Hawaii. The pictures the UAV takes will tell coffee growers when the best time to pick their coffee beans is.
Another UAV will look at how lightning forms during thunderstorms. This UAV will fly above and around the storm. It's good that a UAV is doing this, because it would be dangerous for a people to fly around a thunderstorm!
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