All posts by Jeff Salmon
Pangaea Looks Back at 2016
Undoubtedly, for me the most notable event of 2016 (in the geospatial world) was the FAA’s Rule 107 allowing sUAS to be used in the NAS for commercial work. No more Section 333 exemptions. (Well, for merely flying, anyway; if you want to go beyond the restrictions of 107, you’ll still need to file for...
Buying a Drone for the Holidays?
Friends know of my interest in unmanned aerial systems, so they ask me, “What kind of drone should I buy for Christmas?” I probe a little further to define what their “use case” is. It usually boils down to two categories. 1) For the kids: Cheap. If you’re looking for a toy drone to have...
UAS Crystal Ball 2017
Four things to watch for in the UAS space next year. Regulation: I just made up an acronym—“GBVLOS”—Getting beyond visual line of sight. With the rollout of the FAA’s Rule 107 allowing sUAS into the NAS for commercial work, the profession breathed a sigh of relief. Issues still remain, though: namely exemptions for BVLOS. So...
UAS Surveying without GCPs
The subject of applying direct georeferencing to UAS platforms was a recurrent theme at the 2016 Commercial UAV Expo last week. Direct georeferencing offers the possibility of mapping without the use of ground control points, providing UAS operators a significant advantage in terms of speed. As an example of this technology, we reached out to...
Mars Colonization: Mars Need Surveyors, Part Two
This is Part 2 of our Mars Needs Surveyors series from the Pangaea newsletter. Part 1 is here. As the dream of Mars colonization comes to fruition, what would surveyors be tasked with? Habitat construction SpaceX’s Elon Musk’s vision is to build a city on Mars (appropriately named SpaceX City) that would eventually be inhabited...
Mars Colonization: Mars Needs Surveyors!
Elon Musk’s plan to make us a space-faring and multi-planetary species will provide another planet to survey. Late last month, SpaceX’s founder Elon Musk unveiled his plan to start Mars colonization by 2025. Musk believes passionately that for humankind to survive in the long run, we must become a space-faring and multi-planetary species. Sooner or later,...