Very cool. I've been wondering on the upper limit on this for a while: Indefinite autonomous flight. Upper atmosphere or lower. I think I was inspired by SevenEves' gliders, but in my head, they would be small (er than depicted in the novel, and this article)
I had to look up UAS (Unmanned Aerial System) as the only related acronym I knew previously was UAV. I bet I'm not the only one here who had to do that, rather I'm the only one (so far) to confess his ignorance.
That plane is extremely hollow; you can clearly see the deformation because its not extremely rigid. It's some sort of thin high strength fabric over a minimal skeleton.
This was envisioned by the movie Interstellar where the opening scene shows them chasing an old autonomous Indian Air Force drone that had been flying for years, ostensibly after that agency ceased to exist. I'm sure it's been in other media as well but that's what comes to mind here.
Anyway, it should be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
The article mentions that this Skydweller UAS completed a 73 hour flight.
Back in 2022 there was a solar powered Airbus Zephyr drone that was tested over the Southwestern US with a flight time of 64 DAYS. I wonder how this new drone is different and how a 73 hour flight is significant in comparison.
Here is an article about the Zephyr Drone and its crash that ended its nearly record-tying flight:
Here is a flight replay from adsbexchange showing one day's worth of its flight path where it traced out the Liberty Bell(?) and the shape of the lower 48 at nearly 70,000ft. (Scrolling through its other dates show more playful flight paths)
11 comments
[ 92.1 ms ] story [ 1858 ms ] threadhttps://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=U...
Anyway, it should be interesting to see where this goes in the future.
Back in 2022 there was a solar powered Airbus Zephyr drone that was tested over the Southwestern US with a flight time of 64 DAYS. I wonder how this new drone is different and how a 73 hour flight is significant in comparison.
Here is an article about the Zephyr Drone and its crash that ended its nearly record-tying flight:
https://simpleflying.com/airbus-zephyr-flight-ends/
Here is a flight replay from adsbexchange showing one day's worth of its flight path where it traced out the Liberty Bell(?) and the shape of the lower 48 at nearly 70,000ft. (Scrolling through its other dates show more playful flight paths)
https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae1313&lat=33.419&lon=-...