A Chinese tourist pleaded guilty Friday to a federal misdemeanor for flying a drone in restricted airspace over NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, six weeks after Homeland Security agents arrested him at a hotel near LaGuardia Airport. Xiaodong He entered the plea at an arraignment in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Orlando. The charge carries up to one year in prison, one year of supervised release and a $100,000 fine.
The flight ran 12 minutes and 24 seconds on the evening of July 25 and produced four videos. Court filings put the aircraft within 1.56 miles (2.51 km) of Launch Complex 39B, the pad NASA flies Artemis from, and 4.23 miles (6.81 km) of the Rotation, Processing and Surge Facility, at a maximum altitude of about 230 feet (70 meters).
The takeoff point was the parking lot at Playalinda Beach Access #8, inside Canaveral National Seashore. That lot sits inside the restricted airspace. The violation started before the drone left the ground.
The Takeoff Point Was Already Inside Restricted Area R-2932
Restricted area R-2932 shields the airspace over Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The affidavit places the Playalinda Beach Access #8 parking lot inside that boundary, which makes the launch point itself restricted airspace. NASA and the FAA both have to approve any drone flight there.
The criminal complaint was filed August 7 in Orlando under case number 6:26-mj-1933 and sworn before U.S. Magistrate Judge Leslie Hoffman Price. It carried two counts: violation of national defense airspace under 49 U.S.C. 46307, and operating an aircraft without an airman’s certificate under 49 U.S.C. 46306(b)(7). The supporting affidavit came from NASA Office of Inspector General Special Agent Christine Beers, and The Space Coast Rocket published its detail on September 12.
Kennedy Space Center Security Police answered a drone notification that Saturday evening and found He with three family members. One of them told officers the group was vacationing in the United States and filming scenery, and that nobody had known about any drone restrictions. He showed the officers the footage on the spot, and it was deleted.
The airspace is only the first layer. The National Park Service separately bars launching, landing or operating an unmanned aircraft anywhere in Canaveral National Seashore under 36 CFR 1.5, and the park’s own laws and policies page explains why in one line: “It may be viewed as a threat to national security.” DroneXL covered the surge in national park drone violations in February 2025. This is the version where the park wraps around a spaceport.
The Controller Flagged an Airport, Not a Federal Offense
The affidavit identifies the aircraft as a DJI Mavic 4 Pro, and says the controller displayed the same message at every launch that day: “Aircraft in Warning Zone (Airport). Fly with caution.” That message was the entire intervention standing between a vacationing tourist and a national defense airspace charge.
Investigators confirmed with NASA and the FAA that nothing existed on the paperwork side either. No approved flights in R-2932, no DroneZone authorization or waiver, no LAANC approval, no Part 107 certificate, and no registration for the drone.
DJI switched off its US geofencing in January 2025, trading a system that blocked takeoff in sensitive zones for one that posts advisories. A warning naming a nearby airport is not a warning that the asphalt under your feet is charted restricted airspace with a federal statute attached to it. That answer lives on the sectional chart and in FAA airspace data, never on a controller screen.
Two Earlier Cases Bracket What Sentencing Could Look Like
Federal courts have handled two closely comparable drone cases involving Chinese nationals and restricted military or space airspace. One ended in probation and removal from the country. The other ended in four months the defendant had already served, on a guilty plea to the same airspace statute at issue here.
Xiao Guang Pan, a 71-year-old Chinese-born Canadian on a tourist visa, flew a DJI Mavic 3 Pro near Cape Canaveral Space Force Station across three days in January 2025. DroneXL reported his charges in February and his sentencing that August: 12 months of probation, then deportation and a bar on re-entry.
Yinpiao Zhou flew over Vandenberg Space Force Base during a reconnaissance satellite launch in November 2024 and was arrested at San Francisco International Airport as he tried to board a flight to China. He was sentenced in March 2025 to four months already served, one year of supervised release and $225 in fines. Zhou pleaded guilty to the airspace count on March 10, and prosecutors dropped the second charge as part of the deal.
That plea structure matters here. Florida Today’s account of Friday’s hearing names only the airspace count, and neither the U.S. Attorney’s Office nor the Office of the Federal Public Defender would comment, so the public record does not yet say what became of the airman’s certificate count.
The defense intends to argue for time served at sentencing. He has been living in a hotel at his own expense since the August 8 arrest, and the motion states that he is “running out of funds” and at risk of ending up in a shelter. He surrendered his passport and remains on pretrial supervision.
Congress Raised the Penalty for Repeat Offenders in December
The statute behind Friday’s plea changed nine months ago. Public Law 119-60, enacted December 18, 2025, amended 49 U.S.C. 46307 so that a second or subsequent offense now carries up to five years in prison instead of one. First offenses are untouched.
The amendment does not touch this sentencing. It does mean the next person who does this twice faces felony-length exposure, and it is a fair reading of where Congress’s patience sits on drones over national security sites.
DroneXL’s Take
Fly a drone 1.56 miles from the Artemis pad with no license, no registration and a warning on your screen, and you have earned whatever comes next. Don’t be that guy, in any language, on any visa. He pleaded guilty at the first hearing, which is the correct call.
What deserves defending is what the government actually did. It charged a misdemeanor, not espionage, and it held no press conference about Chinese surveillance of American space infrastructure. The evidence supported an airspace violation, so that is what got charged, and six weeks later there is a plea.
Ignorance earns no automatic credit, and Pan is the reason. He told federal agents he was shooting sunrises and cruise ships. Forensics pulled 243 still images and 13 videos of Space Force infrastructure off his devices, along with Google Maps screenshots showing the base name, and his flight logs carried airspace warnings. “I didn’t know” is a claim investigators test.
The record here reads differently. A family of four at the beach in the evening, footage handed over voluntarily and deleted on the spot, cooperation through the investigation, a plea at the first opportunity. Zhou admitted he flew over Vandenberg deliberately after installing software to defeat his drone’s no-fly limits. Three cases, three sets of facts, three outcomes, and the courts sorted them correctly each time.
I don’t think this case supports the conclusion a lot of people are about to draw from it. DroneXL covered the Chinese graduate student jailed for photographing Navy shipyards, and that one was espionage-shaped from the start. This is a tourist with a camera drone who had never heard of R-2932. Collapsing the two into one story is how you get legislation aimed at the wrong one.
Watch the sentencing hearing for the immigration consequence, because that is the part that bites. Pan was deported and barred from returning. Zhou faced removal after his four months. Prison time is not where this lands. Whether Xiaodong He sees the United States again is.
Sources: Florida Today, The Space Coast Rocket, U.S. Code Title 49, National Park Service
DroneXL uses automated tools to support research and source retrieval. All reporting and editorial perspectives are by Haye Kesteloo. Read our editorial standards.
