The US Navy's New Solar Aircraft Will Fly for 90 Days Without Landing
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The US Navy's New Solar Aircraft Will Fly For 90 Days Without Landing:
The US Navy is working on an uncrewed aircraft called Skydweller that is capable of staying in the air for 90 days without needing to land thanks to large strips of solar panels on both of its wings, a report by New Scientist explains.
The company behind the aircraft, Skydweller Aero, is a U.S.-Spanish aerospace firm developing the technology to enable the U.S. Navy to keep a constant watchful eye over the areas surrounding its ships.
In order to stay airborne for so long, the 236-foot wingspan aircraft houses 2,900 square feet (269.4188 meters) of photovoltaic cells, allowing it to generate up to 2 kilowatts of power. Skydweller Aero also plans to fit its aircraft with hydrogen fuel cells as a backup in case the solar energy harvesting plane goes through a prolonged spell of bad weather.
The Skydweller is a new iteration on the Solar Impulse 2, a crewed solar aircraft that traversed the globe in 2015 and 2016. Skydweller Aero founders John Parkes and Robert Miller purchased the intellectual property and machinery of the Swiss Solar Impulse project before setting out to make their own aircraft.
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