Drones aren't just something that kills Russian soldiers in Ukraine (but we knew that). This article, and the paper, talk about a big drone from Windracers capable of carrying an instrument payload that helps map uncharted islands and also the gravity and magnetic fields in remote regions of Antarctica.
"Windracers ULTRA, an autonomous heavy-lift cargo aircraft, was deployed for autonomous Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) missions to map out remote parts of West Antarctica and investigate how the Earth’s crust was created and deformed.
New research gathered by the scientists using gravity and magnetic sensors was presented in the Journal of Geophysical Research, revealing huge bodies of frozen magma, hidden from view."
The actual paper can be found here:
New Insights Into Western Antarctic Peninsula Magmatism From Joint Inversion of UAV Magnetic and Gravity Data
The PLS (Plain Language Summary): "The Antarctic Peninsula was formed over millions of years from a string of volcanoes and the underlying pools of magma, which turned to solid rock. The processes which control where and how these magmatic rocks formed are related to subduction, the process where dense oceanic crust is forced under the continental margin, releasing water, and triggering melting. Unfortunately, due to sparse data coverage and harsh working conditions the details of these important processes are poorly understood. Using a Windracers Ultra UAV, adapted for environmental science data collection, we collected high resolution gravity and magnetic measurements over an area where the pattern of magmatism was known to change. Using joint inversion of this data, where a computer model finds the rock properties which simultaneously match gravity and magnetic data, assuming magnetic and density (gravity) properties of the rocks are linked, we reveal the shape and type of the hidden rocks. These shapes and rock properties are interpreted, together with photographs of remote rocky islands, to give insights into the subduction processes occurring on the Antarctic Peninsula 20–50 million years ago."
And here's a video of the drone (very promotional):
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