Facebook has completed a second test of a solar-powered drone designed to bring internet access to remote parts of the world.<\/p>\n
The drone – dubbed Aquila – flew for one hour and 46 minutes in Arizona.<\/p>\n
On Aquila’s maiden voyage last summer, the autopilot system was confused by heavy wind and crash-landed.<\/p>\n
This time, the drone flew at an altitude of 3,000ft, a long way from Facebook’s intended 60,000ft goal.<\/p>\n
The social network has ambitious plans for its drone fleet and eventually wants to have them communicating with each other via lasers and staying in the air for months at a time.<\/p>\n
The test – which took place in May but is only now being made public – went “perfectly”, according to a blog post detailing the flight.<\/p>\n
Facebook had initially heralded its June 2016 test a success but later admitted the drone had crashed on landing.<\/p>\n
The crash was only revealed when it emerged that it had been investigated by the National Transportation Safety Board.<\/p>\n
This time, the engineering team added “spoilers” to the wings to increase drag and reduce lift during landing. They also modified the autopilot software and applied a smoother finish to the craft.<\/p>\n
The team filmed the landing and included the video in the blog post.<\/p>\n
Director of aeronautical platforms Martin Luis Gomez said the drone had suffered “a few minor, easily repairable dings”.<\/p>\n
Aquila – which has a wingspan of a Boeing 737 – is part of Facebook’s ambitious plans to connect the world to the internet.<\/p>\n
This week, it announced that it has two billion users, more than a quarter of the world’s population.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Facebook has completed a second test of a solar-powered drone designed to bring internet access to remote parts of the world. The drone – dubbed Aquila – flew for one hour and 46 minutes in Arizona. On Aquila’s maiden voyage last summer, the autopilot system was confused by heavy wind and crash-landed. This time, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[1492,1123,339],"class_list":["post-333210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-citi-trends","tag-drone","tag-facebook"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=333210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333210\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=333210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=333210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=333210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}