In July, we relayed news that Andre Borschberg, a Swiss entrepreneur, had successfully completed a 24-hour flight in his solar-powered airplane dubbed the Solar Impulse. While it may be unfair to compare manned flight to unmanned sorties, leave it to the U.S. Defense Department and Boeing to blow Borschberg’s record completely out of the water air.
The U.S. aeronautics firm, it seems, will soon start work developing an unmanned, solar-powered aircraft that can — get this — stay aloft for five years straight.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which had a hand in bringing us the lovely thing now known as the Internet, last week finalized an agreement with the Boeing to develop the new aircraft, dubbed the SolarEagle. If all goes according plan, the new plane will complete a 30-day demonstration flight in 2014.
As depicted above, the SolarEagle is not your typical plane. (For one, there is no in-flight entertainment.) Its wings — spanning some 400 feet — will be covered with solar panels, which will power propellers and feed fuel cells during daylight hours. It’s not entirely clear how Boeing will initially get the enormous, fragile plane off the ground, but we’re sure they’ll figure something out.
Flying at an altitude of 60,000, the SolarEagle will be well positioned, it is hoped, to “perform persistent communications, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions,” according to Pat O’Neil, a program manager at Boeing’s famed Phantom Works.
