Airbus Zephyr Drone Crashes Hours Before Breaking 64-Day World Record
An Airbus Zephyr high-altitude drone was a few hours away from breaking a 63-year-old flight endurance world record when it suffered a catastrophic failure and crashed.
As Simple Flying reports(Opens in a new window), the Zephyr had been airborne for 64 days and was in touching distance of the world record set by two pilots using a Cessna 172 Skyhawk in 1959. That record still stands at 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, and 5 seconds(Opens in a new window). If you're wondering how a Cessna stayed aloft for so long, it relied on a moving truck on the ground for refueling.
There has been no official explanation as to why the Zephyr suddenly crashed. A representative from Airbus Defence told Simple Flying that:
"Following 64 days of stratospheric flight and the completion of numerous mission objectives, Zephyr experienced circumstances that ended its current flight. No personal injury occurred. Our teams are currently analyzing more than 1500 hours of stratospheric mission data. The valuable experience from this prototype’s ultra-long endurance flight has proved to be a positive step toward the Army’s high-altitude platform goals."
With the help of unfiltered flight data from the ADS-B Exchange(Opens in a new window), the last moments of the Zephyr (callsign ZULU82) were tracked to 50,000 feet above the Arizona Desert. Following the completion of an S-shape maneuver it experienced a rapid vertical descent reaching a top speed of 4,544 feet per minute before the inevitable happened.
The Zephyr doesn't require refueling like the Cessna did, instead it relies on solar panels spread across its 25 meter wing span and a 53-pound lithium-ion battery to power its propellors. As the drone flies at a height of up to 76,000 feet it
Read more on pcmag.com
