Solar plane smashes endurance record – airborne for 7 days non-stop
The Zephyr solar-powered plane has smashed the endurance record for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The craft took off from the US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona at 0640 local time last Friday and is still in the air.
Its non-stop operation, day and night, means it has now gone four times longer than the official mark recognised by the world air sports federation.
The plane has been developed by the defence and research company Qinetiq.
The Zephyr weighs over 100 lbs and takes five people to launch it
Project manager, Jon Saltmarsh, said Zephyr would be brought down once it had flown non-stop for two weeks.
“Zephyr is basically the first ‘eternal aircraft’,” he told BBC News.
The UAV has been under development for a number of years at Qinetiq.
Solar-powered high-altitude long-endurance (Hale) UAVs are expected to have a wide range of applications in the future.
The military will want to use them as reconnaissance and communications platforms. Civilian and scientific programs will equip them with small payloads for Earth observation duties.
Their unique selling point is their persistence over a location. Low-Earth orbiting satellites come and go in a swift pass overhead, and the bigger drones now operated by the military still need to return to base at regular intervals for refuelling.
But as Zephyr has now proved, solar UAVs can be left in the sky.
Their solar cells drive propellers during the day and top up their batteries to maintain the craft through the dark hours of night. An autopilot keeps them circling over the same spot.
The latest version of Zephyr is now 50% bigger than its predecessors.
Zephyr is launched into the early morning Arizona sky
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Holte Ender
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wow…..
I hope there was a toilet….;-)
No pilot.