US students create biodegradable drone, with help from Nasa expert

Led by a Nasa synthetic biology expert, college students have made an unmanned aerial vehicle almost entirely of biodegradable materials. After a crash most of it would disappear.

Drones can be a great help in dealing with environmental issues, flying into protected areas to count populations of an endangered animal, or over coral reefs to assess their condition.

But sometimes conventional drones can turn into litter. If one goes down in a protected area, it might not be possible to retrieve the metal and plastic wreckage.

"I have colleagues who do remote sensing in sensitive areas, and there was a [drone] lost for a couple months in an area you really wouldn't want to lose one," said Lynn Rothschild, of Nasa's research centre.

Rothschild serves as an adviser for a team competing in the international genetically engineered machine competition, and the issue of downed-drone litter seemed a good one for her group to tackle.

One student found a company named Ecovative Design that was growing the team's dream material, which was blocks of fungal foam.