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Welcome to your weekly UAS news update, we have 4 stories for you this week: A Secret Announcement, AUVSI jumps on anti-Chinese drone bandwagon, NASA\u2019s Ingenuity ends mission with 72 flights, Autel releases the Alpha, and Mini 3 and 4 RID update.

AUVSI appears to be alienating a large number of the folks they claim to represent. \nAUVSI released a video this week calling for US Lawmakers to \u201ctake measured actions to strengthen the U.S. drone industry\u201d.\nIf you\u2019ve followed us before, you know we\u2019d love to use US made drones, but there are none available for the same cost with the same capabilities as DJI or Autel. \nAUVSI\u2019s stance particularly affects Public Safety, who has recently seen restrictions on country of origin in a number of states including Florida, Arkansas, Indiana, Mississippi, California, Nevada, Texas, and the 2024 NDAA.\nWe\u2019ve also seen a recent bill from Oklahoma to ban the use of Chinese drones for public safety. \nSo far, the industry\u2019s response hasn\u2019t been in favor of what AUVSI and other American drone manufacturers are pushing, with many companies including us pulling out of AUVSI\u2019s conference. \nThere hasn\u2019t been a better time than now to re-evaluate who is advocating for you and your hobby/profession and where you may be donating. \nIf we can make a recommendation, the Drone Service Providers Alliance is a great group to join. \nWe commonly talk with Vic, Kenji, and Dave Messina about advocacy including fighting local bills that restrict us from flying and those that restrict our Public Safety agencies from using the best tools available to save lives.\n\nNext up this week is an update to NASA\u2019s Ingenuity helicopter.\nIngenuity suffered a \u201cHard landing\u201d on January 18th, which damaged one or more of the rotor blades, making it no longer capable of flight.\nNASA\u2019s goal for Ingenuity was 5 total flights on Mars, instead 72 flights for a total flight time of over 2 hours were completed, with over 10 miles covered\nIt seems Ingenuity\u2019s mission was a success and hopefully we\u2019ll see another version of the helicopter headed to the red planet soon!\n\nLast up this week is the Autel Alpha release!\nThe Alpha appears to be a medium sized industry/public safety drone with a wide camera, zoom camera, laser range finder, and two thermal cameras with up to 56X hybrid thermal zoom.\nThe alpha is much bigger than the Max series and boasts a ton of features, including hot-swappable batteries, mesh networking, 4K 35X optical zoom, IP55 weather rating, and obstacle avoidance. \nLooks like a pretty cool new aircraft, hopefully we\u2019ll be able to get our hands on one to test! \n\nAlright, that\u2019s it, have a great weekend and we\u2019ll see you next week! \n\nhttps://www.linkedin.com/posts/auvsi_auvsi-is-calling-on-us-lawmakers-to-take-activity-7156338684651327488-TGQC/#\n\nhttps://dspalliance.org/\n\nhttps://dronexl.co/2024/01/25/autel-introduces-alpha-drone/\n\nhttps://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/nasas-ingenuity-mars-copter-ends-a-remarkable-run