Facebook’s Aquila on its first successful test flight in Arizona.
Facebook wants to bring the internet to the whole world — using a giant, solar-powered drone with the wingspan of an airliner.
And it flies on the power of roughly three hair-dryers.
That drone, dubbed “Aquila,” completed its first successful flight in Yuma, Arizona, according to a post on Facebook from Mark Zuckerberg’s account on Thursday.
The drone is intended to be one of a fleet of drones flying at 60,000 feet for months at a time and beaming the internet to remote parts of the world.
After two years of development, the drone stayed in the air for 96 minutes, but it’s not ready for full-scale operation yet. Zuckerberg said the 1,000-pound drone will need to be made lighter to last in the air for longer spans. Facebook is also working on adjusting power, weight capacity and a communications payload that will use lasers to transfer data more than 10 times faster than existing systems.
Terrence Horan
“Over the next year we’re going to keep testing Aquila — flying higher and longer, and adding more planes and payloads,” Zuckerberg said in a post on Facebook. “It’s all part of our mission to connect the world and help more of the 4 billion people who are not online access all the opportunities of the internet.”
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