First Russian Scientific Experiments on the Natural Environment Study Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The information received from remote sensing satellites for many years has been successfully used in various economic sectors of the Russian Federation. However, there are cases when it is impossible to promptly obtain satellite observations data of the natural and man-made environment state of country various regions (the cloud cover presence of the Earth, the non-passage of spacecraft orbits in a given area at shooting specified time, different spatial resolution of the equipment, etc.). In this case, the space survey customers have a need to obtain subsatellite information products in the form that specific users are dealing with (the state and volume of forest biomass, agricultural, ecological ecosystems, etc. at the shooting time). Therefore, for subsatellite operational observations, it was necessary to create a local monitoring system based on small aircraft: unmanned aerial vehicles with various onboard equipment minimum set (black-and-white and color panoramic cameras, IR radiometers, radars, lasers, etc.) depending on the task.