# News Source Record

**L-Ne / Open-source news extract** — Original media coverage of unmanned aerial systems.

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Collection date | 25 March 2013 |
| Platform | Quiet Systems |
| Data label | Open-source news record // LRRK collection product |
| Handling | Public-source material. Image rights require separate verification before publication. |
| Scale | Local |
| Language | English |
| Terms matched | UAS; unmanned aircraft system; unmanned aircraft systems; small unmanned aircraft |

## Bibliographic

| Field | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Outlet | Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, New Mexico) |
| Title | PSL partners with AeroVironment for UAS study |
| Dateline | Las Cruces, New Mexico |
| First publisher | no |
| Original URL | https://www.newspapers.com/image/1353954789/?terms=UAS |
| Archive URL | — |
| Dedup key | 2013-03-25|las-cruces-sun-news|nmsu-psl-aerovironment-night-uas |
| Source grade | B1 |

## Pictures

- page: 2013-03-25-las-cruces-sun-news-nmsu-night-uas.jpg
- clips folder: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/12wYYuLheAkr2POrfp-By56Phe8bXQsKv

## Record

**Verified extract — [Fact — B1]** Emily C. Kelley of New Mexico State University Communications, in the Sun-News “Eye on Research” weekly, reported that NMSU’s Physical Science Laboratory partnered with AeroVironment to study the safety of small unmanned aircraft system operations at night in the National Airspace System. Study results strongly indicate nighttime operations of unmanned aircraft systems are safe, maybe even more so than daytime operations. Doug Davis, project principal investigator and director of the Physical Science Laboratory’s Global UAS Strategic Initiatives, said the team initially proposed live-fly demonstrations at night and twilight to assess whether the pilot-in-command and visual observer of a small UAS could acquire the UAS, other tracks or targets, and determine potential collisions. Igor Dolgov, assistant professor in the NMSU Department of Psychology and project lead experimenter, designed the study for NASA comparing observer performance day versus night. AeroVironment personnel flew the company’s Raven and Wasp small unmanned aircraft systems. Mission commanders included Doug Marshall and Brendan Shaughnessy; ground-control coordinators were Luis Salas and Daniel Mendoza. Research was conducted at East Mesa and the Jornada Experimental Range. Dolgov said NMSU is one of the only places outside of military facilities where this kind of testing can be conducted now. The goal is a safety case for night UAS operation that would open it to law enforcement, homeland security, commercial and research applications. PSL released the night-flight study to NASA, which released it to the FAA. The report concludes that while additional testing should be conducted, current limits on night small-UAS flights are overly conservative, especially for law enforcement and first responders in urban areas. Courtesy photo: Luis Salas and Brendan Shaughnessy at the base of operations for the night-UAS study.

**Kinematic object.** Small UAS (AeroVironment Raven and Wasp — NMSU PSL night NAS study at East Mesa / Jornada).

**Coverage frame.** research / regulatory

## Source integrity

- Why this is treated as an original: First local print of the NMSU PSL / AeroVironment night-UAS study. Same campus-wire pattern as the 2011 NMSU Shadow keeper.
- Wire reprint status: NMSU University Communications feature (Emily C. Kelley), not AP/Reuters/McClatchy. First publisher is NMSU Communications; Sun-News is the local print home.
- OCR / image-page caveats: Tesseract on 3A. Columns interleave with medical ads. “Eye on Research” credit locked at the end of the block.
- What was excluded: Adjacent White Sands Hero2Hired brief.

## LRRK relevance

Watch / Lab. A Watch desk would have logged a university-range night-UAS safety case already in NASA/FAA hands arguing that night small-UAS limits were overly conservative.

*LRRK — security assurance for systems that sense, move, and act.*

L-Ne