CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Texas A&M-Corpus Christi unveiled a new enclosed test flight area at the Lone Star Unmanned Aircraft System Center in Flour Bluff on Tuesday.
The test area is a 5-story structure covered with netting. It provides more than 300,000 cubic feet of space for drones of any size.
Because of the center's location near NAS/Corpus Christi, the Lone Star UAS Center can't just fly into open air. But now with the new enclosed facility, researchers and students will be able to do their research and test flights without having to travel to find a testing area.
Kelly Miller, president and CEO of A&M-Corpus Christi says, "we hope that one day in the future, the work we're doing here will help with things like package delivery and will help with all kinds of things that we may not even be able to imagine yet. So I think the innovation of our students, they will be able to take this, we don't even know where yet, the sky's the limit with what they'll be able to do."
Planning for the enclosed test site began about three years ago. Construction took less than 3 weeks to complete. The structure cost about $450,000.
