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Solar-Powered Flight For 81 Hours: a New Endurance World Record
Hallie Siegel writes: A team of researchers from ETH Zurich have just set a new endurance record for solar powered flight of an unmanned autonomous aircraft, achieving over four days of solar-powered flight in a range of weather conditions. Being able to demonstrate more than 24 hours of endurance is important because overcast skies can inhibit recharging and poor weather or high winds can effect power consumption. Nice achievement for this class of aircraft.
This isn't big news for solar or batteries.
Just 2316 km over 81.5 hours is more like floating than flying, and the main advance came from the reduction in mass, not improved solar/battery tech.
It's 6.5 kg while the prior record holder was 13 kg. If you look at the thing, it's not much more than a really large wing.
The records it took were for longest flight among aircraft under 50 kg and longest flight for low-altitude, it doesn't have the overall longest flight, nor longest unmanned flight.
The record for an unpowered glider is 56 hours. He probably could have stayed up longer but the pilot was exhausted.
TFA is a record for "solar powered flight of an unmanned autonomous aircraft", which really tells me the autonomous part is getting better, the solar powered part is just for show