This is SERIOUS Unmanned Vehicle technology! Moon Express, one of the competitors in the Google Lunar X Prize program, has unveiled plans to build a new family of spacecraft.
The company's agreement with Rocket Labs, which is developing the Electron booster that will propel the Moon Express lander to the Moon in hopes of claiming the $20 million GLXP award, covers up to five launches. Following the initial mission, Moon Express has scheduled a launch in 2019 that would establish a robotic research base near the lunar south pole. In 2020, Moon Express hopes to mount the first commercial mission to return a lunar sample to Earth. Hackers are making it easy for DJI drone operators to get around the geofencing function included in the firmware of DJI drones, and the company is taking steps to thwart the practice. Such firmware patches are being made available at various locations on the Internet. The dronemaker is reportedly "very concerned" about legal action, and does not want its aircraft to be involved in incidents where operators violate the law. The company has begun a firmware update campaign to close holes in the firmware used to circumvent its No Fly Zone (NFZ)
restrictions in the past few weeks. It has also started removing older versions of the firmware, thought to be vulnerable, from its servers. Sports drone manufacture Airdog has launched a Kickstarter campaign for the development of its latest aircraft; the ADII Hands-Free sports drone. The ADII is reportedly the "only drone camera built for hands-free from the ground up, the ADII eliminates the need for manned operation giving the user complete active freedom with perfect content capture." All this -- and MORE in today's episode of Airborne-Unmanned!!!
Airborne-Unmanned 07.18.17 is chock full of info in this Weekly News Episode, Tuesday, July 18th, 2017... Presented by Aero-TV veteran videographer and Airborne Hosts Brianne Cross, Christopher Odom, and Laura Hutson, and is supported by ANN CEO/Editor-In-Chief Jim Campbell, Chief Videographer Nathan Cremisino, and Aero-Journalist Tom Patton, this episode covers:
- Moon Express Unveils Expanded Plan To Explore The Solar System
- DJI Drones Being Hacked To Avoid GeoFencing
- Airdog Introduces New Sports-Follow Drone
- Ride Sharing A First Step To Automated Vehicles, Speakers Say
- Lockheed Martin Uses Indago UAS To Capture Footage Of 15th Littoral Combat Ship Launch
- South Korean Tiltrotor UAV Conducts Successful Ship Trials
- Report: Drone Simulator Market Worth $764.7 Million By 2022
- Airborne-Unmanned -- Help Wanted
Get Comprehensive, Real-Time, 24/7 coverage of the latest aviation and aerospace stories anytime, at aero-news.net. And be sure to join us again next week for the next edition of "Airborne-Unmanned" here on Aero-TV. Thanks for watching. See you, again, next week!
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