NASA's Ikhana drone debuts solo in commercial airspace

In a first, NASA released its unmanned Ikhana aircraft into the commercial airspace under the debut mission without an accompanying chase plane. The idea behind flying the scientific drone was to test out the possibilities of leveraging unmanned aircraft to monitor forest fires or conduct emergency search and rescue operations, Fast Company reported.

The Ikhana aircraft took flight from Edwards Air Force Base and reached 20,000 feet in class A airspace. It was also the first autonomous aircraft to use airborne detect-and-avoid technology. The Ikhana is a canonical military drone that NASA acquired in 2006. 

Recently, a massive dust storm raging across Mars had overcome NASA's aging Opportunity rover, putting the unmanned, solar-powered vehicle into sleep mode and raising concerns about its survival, the US space agency has said. 

The unusually severe dust storm has blocked out the Sun over one quarter of the Red Planet, blanketing an area spanning 14 million square miles (35 million square kilometres), NASA said. The robotic vehicle -- one of two currently operating on Mars -- has shut everything down except its master clock, and last communicated with Earth on June 10.  Opportunity, along with its twin named Spirit, launched in 2003 and landed on Mars a year later to hunt for signs of past life. Its mission was initially meant to last just 90 days.

With inputs from ANI