QinetiQ's Zephyr Solar-Powered Plane Takes More Awards

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It’s been a real doozy of a week for the solar-powered, unmanned aircraft known as the Zephyr from the folks out at QinetiQ–so much so, in fact, that records were broken. Just which records, you wonder? Read on.

We already know about the Zephyr’s last record, the one week spent aloft representing the record for continuous flight time by an unmanned craft. But just this week, the Federation Aeronautique Internationale over in Switzerland confirmed the Zephyr had taken out two others as well. The Zephyr now holds the record for flight duration in its class (which you’d think would be a given since it broke the record for flight duration among any class), and also the record for highest altitude achieved by an unmanned craft in the 50 to 500 kilogram (about 110 to 1100 pounds for the non-metrics out there) class.

And as it turns out, FAI issued a bit of an update: turns out that the record for unmanned autonomous flight, which had been previously held by the United States’ Global Hawk from Northrup Grumman, was actually beat by a factor of 11, at 336 hours, 22 minutes, and eight seconds total.

Already the various military forces of the world are looking at the Zephyr (and the like) as a way to provide surveillance and target tracking for extended periods of time without need for refueling, largely owed to the entirely solar-powered operating capability as well as its extremely light-weight construction (it’s built out of mostly carbon fiber and weighs only about 110 pounds).

How long before we start seeing more Zephyrs hit, possibly capable of carrying at least one person, and ushering in an era of lightweight personal aircraft? Sadly, probably never. But the ideas are there, and maybe they can be transferred effectively to making electric cars perform better, or offer some other applications.