Solar Vehicle - Air

Air

Solar ships can refer to solar powered airships or hybrid airships.

There is considerable military interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs); solar power would enable these to stay aloft for months, becoming a much cheaper means of doing some tasks done today by satellites. In September 2007, the first successful flight for 48h under constant power of a UAV was reported. This is likely to be the first commercial use for photovoltaics in flight.

Many demonstration solar aircraft have been built, some of the best known by AeroVironment.

• Manned solar aircraft
  • Gossamer Penguin,
  • Solar Challenger - This aircraft flew 163 miles (262 km) from Paris France to England on solar power.
  • Sunseeker II
  • HB-SIA. Working prototype for Solar Impulse Project
• Unmanned aerial vehicles
  • Pathfinder and Pathfinder-Plus - This UAV demonstrated that an airplane could stay aloft for an extended period of time fueled purely by solar power.
  • Helios - Derived from the Pathfinder-Plus, this solar cell and fuel cell powered UAV set a world record for flight at 96,863 feet (29,524 m).
  • Zephyr - built by Qinetiq, this UAV set the unofficial world record for longest duration unmanned flight at over 82 hours on 31 July 2008
• Future projects
  • Sky sailor (aimed at Martian flight)
  • Solar Impulse (aimed at manned circumnavigation of the globe)
  • various solar airship projects, such as Lockheed Martin's "High Altitude Airship"

A solar-powered aircraft in Switzerland completed a 26-hour test flight starting at 7 a.m. on 8 July 2010 which ended at 9 a.m. the next day. The aircraft was flown to a height of nearly 28,000 feet (8,500 meters) by Andre Borschberg. During the evening, the aircraft slowly descended to an altitude of 4,500 feet (1,500 meters), where it remained for the rest of the night using battery power. An hour before dawn, the aircraft still had six hours' capacity remaining in its solar-fueled batteries.

Just 15 days later on 23 July 2010 the QinetiQ Zephyr, a lightweight solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle engineered by the United Kingdom defence firm QinetiQ, claimed the endurance record for an unmanned aerial vehicle. It flew in the skies of Arizona for over two weeks (336 hours). It has also soared to over 70,700 feet (21.5 km).