Helios plane

2001/07/17 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Patenteak/Asmakizunak
• Komunikazioak

Helios, a special aircraft built by NASA, flew Sunday at 23,000 meters from Earth. The test flight in Hawaii was a success.

Helios is a driverless aircraft that works with solar energy. In the 14 aircraft engines there is a small electric motor powered by the sun. It measures 75 meters side by side and just 2.5 meters wide. Two pilots control from the ground using laptops. NASA wants to send Helios up to 30,000 meters high in late summer, three times above conventional aircraft.

NASA has assigned more than one scope to Helios. On the one hand, they consider that they can work as an alternative satellite or as a low-cost telecommunications platform. On the other hand, they consider that this is a suitable tool for the study of the atmospheric fraction between 18.000-30,000 meters and that, for example, will serve for the monitoring of hurricanes.

NASA has built several aircraft like Helios, of which we have known more than once in recent times. Without going any further, last month
we talked about Pathfinder-Plus.

Video:http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/1440000/video/_1441087_solar22_bruce_vi.ram