There are many companies involved in manufacturing solar drones; most of the industry heavyweights are in on the action. This company is not one of those. They have a small-scale prototype and are claiming a 60m wingspan (enormous), 65,000-feet-flight for 5 years. NASA among others haven't gotten a month. The model they have is a glider with solar panels. There is literally nothing new here besides the marketing. (They also didn't coin "atmospheric satellite", that goes back decades; AeroVironment had a company with the same concept in the 90s.)
This is a small group out of New Mexico with minimal funding and experience making wildly exaggerated claims. Five years is just laughably irresponsible for anyone involved in aerospace engineering.
In real engineering news, Astrium bought QinetiQ's solar UAV Zephyr program, and outlined last month an actual two-week high-altitude 70,000-foot solar flight here: http://www.astrium.eads.net/en/news2/first-flight-of-astrium.... This is a real engineering team with real money, real development and a real engineering feat.
Notice the lack of "five years" linkbait in Astrium's press release... which is why it wasn't spam-posted all over the web this week.
There are many companies involved in manufacturing solar drones; most of the industry heavyweights are in on the action. This company is not one of those. They have a small-scale prototype and are claiming a 60m wingspan (enormous), 65,000-feet-flight for 5 years. NASA among others haven't gotten a month. The model they have is a glider with solar panels. There is literally nothing new here besides the marketing. (They also didn't coin "atmospheric satellite", that goes back decades; AeroVironment had a company with the same concept in the 90s.)
This is a small group out of New Mexico with minimal funding and experience making wildly exaggerated claims. Five years is just laughably irresponsible for anyone involved in aerospace engineering.
In real engineering news, Astrium bought QinetiQ's solar UAV Zephyr program, and outlined last month an actual two-week high-altitude 70,000-foot solar flight here: http://www.astrium.eads.net/en/news2/first-flight-of-astrium.... This is a real engineering team with real money, real development and a real engineering feat.
Notice the lack of "five years" linkbait in Astrium's press release... which is why it wasn't spam-posted all over the web this week.