Unmanned Nasa plane flies solo through public airspace

Nasa has flown a large, remotely piloted predator drone equipped with detect-and-avoid technologies through the national airspace system for the first time without a safety chase plane following it. The space agency says the'milestone' flight over California moves the US closer to normalising unmanned aircraft operations in airspace used by commercial and private pilots. The test used a non-military version of the Air Force's MQ-9 Predator B called Ikhana that is 36 feet (11 meters) long and has a 66-foot (20-meter) wingspan. It paves the way for large remotely-piloted aircraft to be used in all kinds of services, from fighting forest fires to providing emergency search and rescue operations, according to Nasa. The flight took off from Edwards Air Force Base in California and entered controlled air space almost immediately.