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Solar Craft Flies Through Two Nights

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the nasa-awash-with-envy dept.

An anonymous reader writes "A solar-powered, unmanned craft has flown for 54 hours — a record for both unmanned aerial vehicles and solar craft. None before has managed to store enough solar energy to fly through more than one night. There is also a video showing the 18m carbon fiber wing craft being launched."

2 of 156 comments (clear)

  1. Re:An idea by dougmc · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or even better go a bit further than that during mid summer and then it makes no difference how fast you go because you'll be in 24 hour sunlight.
    The problem with that idea is that as your latitude goes up, the angle of the sun goes down. It approaches 90 degrees at the equator, but it's much lower above the arctic circle. So solar cells on top of your plane will be *much* less efficient. You might be able to make a second giant `wing' of solar cells that you can adjust the angle of (but it generates no lift, so you still need your main wing), so it's nearly vertical to catch that sun at midnight above the arctic circle, but in that case you've greatly increased the weight and drag of the plane, and even then the sun you're picking up is greatly reduced in intensity because it's gone through lots and lots of atmosphere.


    Storing energy is the key. You might be able to store it in batteries like these people have done, or store it in your altitude and just let it glide down at night -- but that would require a really efficient plane. This looks to be a really efficient plane, but it's obviously not quite efficient enough to do that.

    That would be cool if they'd try to fly it across the Atlantic -- it would be the first electric plane to do so, and the first solar powered plane to do so. TAM 5 took 39 hours to cross the Atlantic, and this plane was up longer than that -- but it's a lot slower too. TAM 5 averaged about 48 mph, and I'll bet this plane is less than half that.

  2. Grousing about submissions by kwerle · · Score: 4, Informative

    Not only did I submit this story with no type-o's, last night, but I also made reference to the previous solar powered flight that lasted 2 nights, which this submission implies never happened before.

    Though the previous one also did gliding/non-powered flight part of the time. Still, up for 48 hours.