Europe’s defense and space agencies are to expand their cooperation on integrating unmanned aircraft systems into civil airspace for commercial and government missions with a second phase of a project to demonstrate that UAS can be controlled via satellite communications.

The European Defense Agency (EDA) and European Space Agency (ESA) staged a demonstration in Spain in April 2013, controlling a UAS in nonsegregated airspace via satcom under the Desire (Demonstration of Satellites enabling the Insertion of Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems in Europe) project.

The agencies have agreed to cooperate on a Desire II project to demonstrate that UAS flying beyond radio line-of-sight can provide services such as environmental monitoring and maritime surveillance using satellite-based command-and-control data links.

Quelle: AviationWeek