10 mission cases with direct support from NASA focals: (1) FluidCam mission, (2) Hurricane intensity development, (3) Cubesat testing platform, (4) Cosmic Dust Collection, (5) Profile missions from 90,000 ft to 30,000 ft, (6) Chemical/Air sensing, (7) Lightning Package, (8) Cloud thermal data collection, (9) Volcano plume monitoring, (10) Urban/city diurnal thermal data. In addition other NASA Earth Science missions that would benefit from this technology are: Oceanographic Research, Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) Surveillance, Tornado Monitoring, Cloud and Aerosol Measurements, Stratospheric Ozone Chemistry, Tropospheric Pollution/Air Quality, Water Vapor Measurements, O2 and CO2 Flux Measurements, Vegetation Composition, Aerosol and Precipitation Distribution, Glacier and Ice Sheet Dynamics, Antarctic Exploration Surveyor, Imaging Spectroscopy, Topographic LIDAR Mapping, Magnetic Fields Measurement, Surface Deformation Interferometry. There are so many NASA missions, that this is a small indication of the NASA market. Space Act Agreement - NASA JPL/NASA Ames/Swift Engineering Inc: A Space Act Agreement (SAA) has been started by Lance Christensen (NASA JPL) during Phase 1 due to the support of a platform like this (30-day UAV) that would benefit air quality sensing in the stratosphere. Swift Engineering expects that Phase II will utilize this SAA to define a mission use case for future NASA work.
Emergency Response: Events such as active volcano plume assessment, forest fire damage assessment, forest fire communications, pirate/coastal patrol, emergency on-demand communications, disaster assessment, and search and rescue. This technology can outpace satellites because it can be launched in a matter of hours to stare and manage large disaster/emergency response areas. Conservation, Agriculture, and Marine Applications: wildlife census and animal tracking, land resource management, crop disease tracking, mapping, agriculture yield maximization, and invasive plant assessment. Currently right now the US is spending time creating marine protected areas (MPAs). There are currently no cost-effective technologies that can monitor them. Agricultural fields need almost 4-in resolution on the ground and current public data (LandSat) can't provide that resolution. This technology can easily outpace satellite NRE company costs. Border Patrol: It takes $12,255/hr to operate drones on the border. This technology is targeting $1000/hr cost; an order of magnitude decrease for border patrol. High Resolution Imagery: Google recently (2014) acquired Skybox for $500M to launch $10M satellites using $50M-$90M rockets to get near real-time HD imagery of the earth; similar results for orders for magnitude less cost. Swift has discussed with 2 Tier 1 ($5B+) aerospace companies and 1 commercial ($10B+ revenues) company. Swift has also received interest from the DOE, DHS, and NAVY.
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