Windracers ULTRA Drone “Unlocks New Secrets of Antarctic Geology”

Win­drac­ers, a UK-based design­er, man­u­fac­tur­er and oper­a­tor of the ULTRA,  an autonomous heavy-lift car­go air­craft, has helped British Antarc­tic Sur­vey (BAS) unlock new data in pre­vi­ous­ly unchart­ed parts of Antarc­ti­ca, reports a press release.

The release explains, “In a world-first for drone-assist­ed sci­ence, BAS employed Win­drac­ers ULTRA for autonomous Beyond Visu­al Line of Sight (BVLOS) mis­sions to map out remote parts of West Antarc­ti­ca and inves­ti­gate how the Earth’s crust was cre­at­ed and deformed.”

This new research, pub­lished in the Jour­nal of Geo­phys­i­cal Research, used state-of-the-art grav­i­ty and mag­net­ic sen­sors to reveal huge bod­ies of frozen mag­ma, hid­den below the icy sea. 

Pho­tographs of pre­vi­ous­ly unex­plored islands, tak­en at the same time, show how these rocks were deformed as the moun­tains of the Antarc­tic Penin­su­la were pushed up by move­ment of the Earth’s tec­ton­ic plates. 

The release con­tin­ues, “Until now, the lack of data from this remote area meant sci­en­tists had lim­it­ed under­stand­ing of the region. Using the long-range, heavy-lift capa­bil­i­ty and autonomous oper­a­tion of Win­drac­ers ULTRA, BAS experts were able to quick­ly and effec­tive­ly map out the hid­den geol­o­gy of this inac­ces­si­ble region.”

UK Win­drac­ers ULTRA Autonomous Drone “Flies over Antarc­ti­ca”

Win­drac­ers Announces Lat­est Con­tract “to Pro­vide NORCE with ULTRA Autonomous Car­go Air­craft for Antarc­tic Mis­sions”

Stephen Wright, Founder and Group Exec­u­tive Chair­man of Win­drac­ers, com­ment­ed, “We’re proud to sup­port the world-class sci­en­tists at British Antarc­tic Sur­vey and play a role in deep­en­ing our under­stand­ing of cli­mate sys­tems and sea-lev­el change.”

He con­tin­ued, “We are grate­ful to the British Antarc­tic Sur­vey for their ongo­ing col­lab­o­ra­tion with Win­drac­ers. These orig­i­nal mis­sions demon­strate how the ULTRA is already deliv­er­ing real-world impact and oper­at­ing in one of the world’s most chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments.”

Stephen Wright

Tom Jor­dan, Geo­physi­cist at the British Antarc­tic Sur­vey, added, “This project paves the way for new ways of col­lect­ing data across mul­ti­ple sci­ence areas around Antarc­ti­ca, pro­vid­ing insights into the con­ti­nents past, and the crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion need­ed to mon­i­tor and pre­dict how the con­ti­nent will change in response to the warm­ing cli­mate into the future.”

A pre­vi­ous SWARM project (the use of mul­ti­ple ULTRA uncrewed air­craft sys­tems work­ing togeth­er, coor­di­nat­ed by a SWARM sys­tem, to per­form tasks such as wild­fire detec­tion, mit­i­ga­tion, and sup­pres­sion, as well as aid dis­tri­b­u­tion), fund­ed by UKRI Inno­vate,  demon­strat­ed the aircraft’s val­ue in real-world sur­vey and logis­tic set­tings, prov­ing its poten­tial for future deploy­ments in remote and chal­leng­ing envi­ron­ments around the world. 

Lat­er this year, Win­drac­ers will launch a new oper­a­tional hub in Malawi to sup­port mid­dle-mile deliv­ery of human­i­tar­i­an air car­go mis­sions across Africa.

For more infor­ma­tion

https://windracers.com/

(Images: Win­drac­ers)

For the lat­est news, insights and con­tent regard­ing the glob­al Advanced Air Mobil­i­ty mar­ket, please join the fol­low­ing eVTOL Insights chan­nels: What­sApp, Face­book, Insta­gram, Spo­ti­fy, Apple Pod­casts, YouTube, X and LinkedIn.