Sundrone with wing buckles wider than jumbo -Jet could fly for several months

A solar -powered surveillance drone with a wing buckle larger than a Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet could fly for weeks or months at a time, according to its operator, while looking for drug smuggling vessels, pirates or fleet warships. It has performed the flights from the American Gulf Coast this month.

The Skydweller drone, run by the US-Spanish company Skydweler Aero, has a wing buckle of 72 meters that existed the width of most commercial passenger rays. But it only weighs approx. 2500 kg-as much as a Ford F-150 truck. It is based on the Solar Impulse 2 aircraft that performed the first solar cell-ray-impaired flight surrounds the world in 2016. Skydweler Aero bought and converted the groundbreaking aircraft with the goal of building a fleet of similar solar-driven, carbon fiber drones capable of “Perpetual Flight” in height exceeding 13 kilometers.

The Skydweller drone made the world’s first ucluede and autoomous flight of a solar cell-coated aircraft in April 2024. It also performed test flights during the year with the longest lasting more than 22 hours, supported by US military funding to evaluate its fitness for maritime drone patrols.

Most recently, the solar -driven drone made its longest flight even after starting from Stennis International Airport in Mississippi on July 20. It remained airborne over Gulf Coast for more than three days before landing on July 23, according to FlightTradar24 Flight Tracking Service. The service shows that the drone also flew earlier this month on July 14 for more than 18 hours.

Skydeweler Drone’s Wingspan is almost twice as large as for the large surveillance drones, such as Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk use of the US Air Force, and its 400 kg payload, which far exerts the weight that most solar-powered drones can lift. And recently, the French carrier Thales helped equip the Skydweller drone with an airborne surveillance radar.

But the decades -long quest to market solar cell -pulled drones “has been a story of high hopes and spectacular failures,” said Arthur Holland Michel, a research partner at the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway. Both Google and Facebook tried to develop solar cell -punched drones for Delive Internet Service before giving up their efforts. Aviation manufacturer Airbus has also invested a lot in its smaller Zephyr-sole electric drone, but “has not yet seen annoying return,” says Michel.

“The militarys have been sponsoring Solar Drone -Demo flights for over a decade, but no one has acquired the technology for a record program,” says Michel. “Sun drones are impressive and they make a lot of sense in theory, but it is not immensely clear that a sustainable business case for them in practice.”