QinetiQ’s Solar-Powered Zephyr Attempting To Stay Aloft For 14 Days
It’s summer here in the Northern hemisphere, and that means the solar-based industry in the US is in top experimental gear. A few more months and they’ll hibernating or relocating to their Australian headquarters, but in the meantime, we’re getting a lot of solar-related news. It wasn’t long ago that the Solar Impulse proved it could stay in the air for 24 hours (26, in fact), and now we’re hearing that Qinetiq’s much-smaller craft, the Zephyr, will be going for a world-record 14 days. Of course, it already holds the world record, since it’s been in the air a good week or so already. It’s kind of like when you set the high score but the points are still rolling in. Unlike the Solar Impulse, the Zephyr is intended to be a long-flight, low-payload craft, meaning you won’t be strapping yourself into one any time soon. At 50kg/110lb gross weight, the Zephyr is about as light as a functioning solar craft of that size can be; its construction is carbon fiber and the paper-thin solar cells are connected to a handful of Li-S batteries. Continue reading…
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