Sagitta Research Demonstrator

The Sagitta Research Demonstrator from Airbus Defence and Space is a jet powered UAV developed in cooperation with German research institutes as part of the Open Innovation initiative.

Sagitta
Sagitta at DLRK 2017
Role Research aircraft
National origin Germany
Manufacturer Airbus Defence and Space, DLR, THI, TUC, TUM, UniBw
First flight 5 July 2017
Status in flight test

History

The goal of the open innovation program is the advancement of the continuous exchange between industry and research institutes in the area of technologies for unmanned aerial vehicles. In 2010 research studies were launched at the academic partner institutes at Technical University of Chemnitz and Technical University of Munich, the Bundeswehr University Munich , the technical university Ingolstadt and at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) at Braunschweig and Oberpfaffenhofen. All partners designed and built unmanned research aircraft to demonstrate technologies out of the research programme. The first flight took place 5 July 2017 at the Denel Overberg Test Range in South Africa.[1]

Development

All subsystems were developed and built by partners. Final integration and testing took place at the military aircraft centre of Airbus in Manching, Bavaria, Germany.

Design

The unmanned aircraft has a wingspan and length of approximately 3,00m and a maximum mass of 150 kg. It is powered by two BF-300F jet engines from BF Turbines with 300 N thrust each. It offers space for several experiments.

The pitch, roll and yaw control surfaces are actuated by electric actuators (fly-by-wire). The landing gear is retracted electrically. The flight control system consist of a flight control computer, a navigation unit (differential GPS and INS) and an air data system. A mission computer is installed to manage and execute mission tasks. The flight and the mission are controlled by a ground control station.

The aircraft communicates via multiple data links. Flights are fully automatic, including take-off and landing (ATOL).

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gollark: caddy v2 is kind of bees. I might switch bagk to nginx.
gollark: * would be
gollark: It can also work on multicore CPUs, apparently, although this is presumably more optimized for that.
gollark: It's vaguely related!

See also

Aircraft of comparable role, configuration and era

References
  1. "Successful first flight for UAV demonstrator SAGITTA". Airbus. Retrieved 2018-09-01.

Sources
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