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LiveScience
LiveScience
Peter Ray Allison

Meet Skydweller: A solar-powered drone that can fly for 90 days straight — it's wider and 160 times lighter than a Boeing 747

A solar-powered aircraft at Skydweller's facility at Albacete airport on April 3, 2023, in Albacete, Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Skydweller is a solar-powered aircraft developed by Skydweller Aero, an Albacete-based developer of aircraft for the commercial and defense sectors, which announced the successful completion of autonomous flight tests in Castilla-La Mancha. .

U.S. tech startup Skydweller Aero has teamed up with Thales, a French electronics company specializing in defense systems, to develop a new maritime surveillance drone that can stay aloft far longer than existing machines.

Skydweller powers itself purely from solar energy and aims to be capable of continuous flight. The initial flight milestone will be for it to remain aloft for 90 days, but ultimately it has the potential to fly for much longer.

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