After Crash, Facebook Internet Drone Completes Successful Flight

Facebook's Aquila internet drone recently completed its second full-calibration test flying, and this time the aircraft had a smooth landing.

The exam flight took identify on May 22, but Facebook merely shared details on Th.

"The aircraft flew for 1 60 minutes and 46 minutes, and landed perfectly on our prepared landing site," Facebook's Martin Luis Gomez wrote in a post on the company'south engineering science blog. Check out a video of the successful landing below.

This test was an comeback from the get-go flight, during which Aquila experienced a "structural failure" every bit it was coming in for a landing and crashed in the Arizona desert, causing the United states of america National Transportation Safety Board to investigate the incident.

To set up for this second test flight, the Aquila team made a number of modifications to the shipping, taking into account the lessons they learned from that first trip, Gomez wrote. They added "spoilers" to the wings, for instance, to increase drag and reduce elevator during the landing arroyo. They also modified the autopilot software, applied a smoother finish on the plane, added hundreds of sensors to gather new data, and installed a "horizontal propeller stopping mechanism to support a successful landing," he added.

The team also prepared a 500-foot circle of level gravel, about 6 inches deep on which Aquila would land.

"Aquila flies apart, with the exception of manual interventions in cases such as lining up with the wind," Gomez wrote. "Before long before landing, the flight crew uploads a landing plan based on the wind management."

A few seconds before landing, the plane's autopilot killed the propellers, as planned. This happens so the propellers can exist locked in a horizontal position and so they're not damaged when the aircraft touches down. In this test flight, "simply 1 propeller [out of four] locked horizontally," as it should have, Gomez wrote. However, he said, the "aircraft settled onto the landing surface very gently and came to a stop in nigh x meters."

Gomez called the landing "absolutely perfect," but admitted that Aquila suffered a "few small-scale, easily repairable dings" from the gravel.

The drone has the wingspan of a commercial airliner but only runs the power equivalent of 3 hair dryers. Facebook says it will eventually wing for weeks at a time, beaming internet signals up to 60 miles away.

"By pattern, Aquila does null fast: It climbs slowly, descends fifty-fifty slower, and when flight upwind moves only at 10-xv mph over the ground," Gomez wrote. "We designed Aquila this fashion considering information technology is meant to stay in the aforementioned area for long periods of time to supply internet access."

Going forward, Facebook plans to use the data it collected from this flight to farther refine the shipping.

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Angela Moscaritolo

Angela Moscaritolo is PCMag'south expert on fitness and smart home products. Teaching yoga for nigh 10 years has helped her in evaluating a range of connected health products including fitness trackers, heart rate monitors, rowers, smart scales, stationary bikes, strength training machines, treadmills, and more. Angela too tests smart home devices from her ranch in Florida, including air purifiers, kitchen appliances, and robot vacuums, only to proper noun a few.