Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger credited an unmanned NASA aircraft Monday with helping save the Sierra foothills town of Paradise from a wildfire last week, calling the plane "one of the most exciting new weapons in our firefighting arsenal."

Schwarzenegger was at NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, getting a behind-the-scenes look at the help the aircraft has given to crews fighting more than 1,700 blazes that have blackened 829,000 acres of California this fire season.

The plane, an adaption of the Predator drone used by the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, can stay airborne for more than 20 hours. It uses an infrared imagery system to identify hot spots and transmit that information instantly to firefighters across the state.