If you’re flying surveillance drones and don’t want them to be found by the people you’re spying on, ‘living’ drones that decompose after a crash landing might be just what you’re looking for.

NASA and a team of students from Stanford and Brown Universities, have built the world’s first “biological UAV”, an autonomous flying machine made from organic materials that just completed its maiden flight.

Drones have certain advantages over conventional aircraft because they’re much smaller and don’t need a pilot to fly them. But like airplanes, there’s still a chance drones might be shot down or crash, and that can cause a lot of embarrassment for the one who’s doing the spying.

To remedy the problem, researchers at NASA’s Ames Research Center are building “bio-drones” made from a fungus that quickly degrades in the event of an accident, meaning there’s no evidence of its presence – nor any technology left behind for the bad guys to steal.

“No one would know if you’d spilled some sugar water or if there’d been an airplane there,” Lynn Rothschild, who led the creation of the drones, told New Scientist.

The special material is called mycellium, which is grown in special shapes by a company called Ecovative Designs. Mycellium is mainly used as an eco-friendly packaging material, which makes it perfect for drones that want to be disappeared. The substance is given a protective cover of several sheets of sticky cellulose that’s grown from bacteria, covered with protein cloned from wasp saliva. Even the electronics are biodegradable, as these are printed onto the circuits using silver nanoparticle ink.

That’s not to say the drone is fully biodegradable. The batteries, controls and propellers are still made out of traditional materials, but the team isn’t done yet. The next step of their plan is to ‘grow’ sensors from E.coli bacteria, while plans for a biodegradable motor and propellers are also in the works.

Image credit: IGEM 2014