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A solar-powered drone designed to take on the multimillion-dollar market for satellites in space has set a record by staying in flight at high altitude for nearly 26 days. Airbus has plenty of plans for its so-called pseudo-satellite, including possible military reconnaissance and monitoring the spread of wildfires, among other activities.
The European aerospace consortium Airbus announced that the latest model of its Zephyr drone had landed near Yuma, Arizona, late last week, after staying on the wing continuously for 25 days, 23 hours and 57 minutes, and breaking a world record for long-endurance flight.
The drone was driven by electric power from solar panels on its wings during daylight, when it flew at altitudes above 70,000 feet (21,300 meters), Airbus spokesman Alain Dupiech told Live Science.
At night, the drone used stored battery power, dropping to around 50,000 feet (15,240 meters) by morning — well above any clouds and bad weather, and higher than regular air traffic, except military spy planes , Dupiech said.
Previously, the endurance record was held by an older prototype of the Zephyr drone, which stayed airborne 14 days in 2014.
Airbus hopes the latest Zephyr drone will take on some of the commercial market for satellite launches into Earth orbit, by carrying out tasks like high-altitude photography and environmental monitoring for weeks or months at a time.
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Thursday August 23 2018, @03:05PM
You are correct, of course. The kit is billed as a pseudo-satellite. I thought it would be helpful to compare the two.
Additional data point: Wikipedia lists the cruise speed of this as 35 miles/hour. That would make the time for equatorial circumnavigation just over 29 days ignoring the very real concerns of winds aloft. At a higher latitude and leveraging the jet stream it should be able to make it around the ball two or three times in 22 days.