According to foreign media New Atlas, a drone designed for high-altitude communications has gradually approached practical applications, and HAPSMobile Sunglider successfully completed another round of tests in New Mexico. The solar-powered aircraft took off from the US spaceport and flew to new heights. The team is now focusing on test runs at stratospheric altitude.
The High Altitude Platform System (HAPS) aircraft is the result of a collaboration between Japan’s SoftBank subsidiary HAPSMobile and aircraft system developer AeroVironment. The concept was recently renamed Sunglider and is reminiscent of other high-altitude long endurance (HALE) aircraft, such as Facebook’s solar-powered Aquila drone, which is designed to deliver Internet coverage to developing regions, but Was abandoned in 2018.
Sunglider also obtains electricity from solar panels distributed on the wings. The wings are 78 meters (255 feet) in length and have 10 thrusters in total to achieve a top speed of 110 kilometers (68 miles) per hour. The aircraft is designed to transport telecommunications payloads to the stratosphere and fly at that altitude for several months.
The team stated that in this way, each aircraft could one day provide connectivity to an area spanning 200 kilometers (124 miles) and connect with other Sungliders to form a larger network and cover a larger area. People in developing regions provide services.
The first Sunglider was assembled in 2019 when it was called HAWK30. Since then, the team has tested the aircraft's performance through a series of low-altitude test flights. The most recent one was carried out at the US Spaceport on July 23. This was the fourth time Sunglider was dispatched. It flew to its highest altitude so far. This marked Sunglider's completion of basic aircraft testing. The team performed flight speed changes, on-board balance control and automatic flight control to simulate safety measures when ground communication was interrupted.
HAPSMobile has built a dedicated test site in the US Spaceport, which is also the business location of Virgin Galactic. It plans to conduct further test flights here and develop towards the edge of stratospheric height.
"We are very pleased that we successfully completed all the basic tests," said Junichi Miyakawa, President and CEO of HAPSMobile. "This test flight verified our steadily accumulated research results. The elegant flight at the new US spaceport facility gave us great confidence. Based on our experience and lessons learned from these basic tests, I think the HAPS business has greater We will continue to work towards our ultimate goal, which is to use the HAPS platform to narrow the world’s digital divide and completely change mobile connectivity."
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