Northeast UAS Airspace Integration Research (NUAIR) has announced that it has validated the parachute on the package delivery drones of Israel-based drone company Flytrex as compliant with industry standards, after completing extensive testing at the New York UAS Test Site in Rome, New York.

For NUAIR, this is the second parachute standard validation that it has performed. NUAIR says that the validation advances the potential for commercial drone package delivery and routine flights over people.

“NUAIR is proud to provide companies with this level of standards testing at the New York UAS Test Site,” says Tony Basile, chief operations officer at NUAIR.

“Such tests and partnerships support our mission to safely integrate unmanned aircraft into the national airspace. We look forward to continuing to validate industry leading technology, supporting the ever-growing commercial UAS industry.”

Under NUAIR, Flytrex’s testing of Drone Rescue Systems’ (DRS) M600 parachute supports a recently announced partnership between New York and Israel by New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, as well as the creation of a UAS Center of Excellence in the Mohawk Valley, which will be led by NUAIR.

Designed to reduce the risk of harming people on the ground, the M600 parachute safely brings equipment down in the event that there is a malfunction. The parachute features a patented mechanism that deploys it within milliseconds, and it takes just a few minutes to re-pack the system and relaunch the UAS.

Flight data is stored in the DRS-M600’s traceable “black box,” which is similar to what manned aircraft do. This means that if there is a malfunction, the data can be recovered and analyzed to determine why the parachute was deployed.

During testing, Flytrex’s DJI Matrice 600 Pro equipped with the DRS-M600 was put through 45 functionality tests across five different failure scenarios. The tests were successful, and proved that the DRSM600 complies with the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International standard specification for small UAS parachutes, which opens the door for Flytrex to obtain a waiver to operate its UAS over people.

“NUAIR’s testing at the New York UAS Test Site to validate the parachute on Flytrex’s package delivery drones is helping move this company and others toward commercial UAS activity that will build the drone industry and other industries in Central New York and the Mohawk Valley,” says Empire State Development President, CEO and Commissioner Howard Zemsky.