a solar-powered drone fly for five years without stop
Cairo : Alsahafa An American aerospace company has developed a light-weight solar-powered drone that can fly at 65,000 feet for five years without stop. The plane belongs to the Solara series, the largest of which measures 60 metres wide, are classified as a 'High Altitude Long Endurance solar atmospheric satellites that are capable of carrying telecom, reconnaissance and atmospheric sensors.' The Solara aircraft is self-sufficient - it is covered in around 3,000 solar panels that produce about 7 kW of electricity which help it to fly above the clouds, so it would be exposed to sunlight constantly during daylight hours and store energy for the night flight.
The Titan Aerospace company plans to build its largest plane Solara 60, which could carry up to 250 pounds of payload, such as anything from signals intelligence gear or electro-optical sensors to communications equipment. According to Flight Daily website, Solara 50 and Solara 60 will be launched with a catapult,. They are designed to be cheaper than the cost of a satellite, while carrying out similar functions such as surveillance, crop-monitoring, weather and disaster oversight, or any other monitoring that low-altitude satellites track. According to the reports published by Forbes and CBS Las Vegas, one is scheduled for completion next year and could cost less than $2 millions. Titan’s chief electrical engineer, Fasten Sanders: 'We’re trying to do a single-million-dollar-per-aircraft platform. And the operation cost is almost nothing — you’re paying some dude to watch the payload and make sure the aircraft doesn’t do anything stupid.' Titan’s website says it has orders for three of the Solara 50s and one of the Solara 60s. Although they have not divulged who placed the order Breaking Defense website speculates the most obvious customers for the Solara in the defense and intelligence world would be the CIA, NRO and NGA. Chief Technology Officer Max Yaney, told Breaking Defense, early discussions had been held with some of the intelligence agencies. He illustrated how two planes could be positioned in a satellite orbit at either end of the United States and if needed in an emergency they could be repositioned to take photos, provide 4G cell coverage or help with mapping.
Mr. Yaney told Flight Global: 'We've been developing this for a number of years.' 'Obviously there are some very exciting programs that have been attempted over the years. This is the holy grail of edge-of-space access.... We've taken the lessons learned from all of those programs'. 'We make heavy use of the latest and greatest composite materials and advanced composite techniques developed over recent years.' There are actually fantastic advances in composites that allow us to meet the strength and weight requirements. We employ the entire spectrum.' He added that Solara series differ from the traditional drones developed such as the Predator drone, and there is no need to a pilot. Besides it is powered by an engine, driven by a propeller, can fly up to 400 nautical miles (740 km) to a target, loiter overhead for 14 hours, then return to its base.
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