Skydweller is dead serious. The Spanish-American company that has developed the first perpetual flight solar aircraft for commercial purposes has been carrying out test flights in the skies of Castilla La Mancha for many months. In June of last year we had the opportunity to visit his facilities in Albacete, where he resides your engineering and development centerand we left there with the feeling of having witnessed a serious proposal with potential.
In fact, some of the organizations that closely follow the progress that this company is making are the Spanish Ministry of Defense, the United States Department of Defense, and the French and Luxembourg Ministries of Defense. However, the applications in which the aircraft that Skydweller has developed fit are not only military.
It also aspires to play an important role in the ecological transition in which we have embarked and can intervene in maritime rescue actions, in the fight against fires, and can even act as a flying communications tower capable of provide 5G coverage to remote locations or in emergency situations, among other usage scenarios. Of course, before being used for all this, this plane must pass many very rigorous tests.
Autonomous flight tests passed. Next stop: payload flights
Skydweller’s solar plane has a double ambition: to remain in uninterrupted flight for as long as possible, and, furthermore, to operate completely autonomously. Without a pilot and without the need to be controlled from the ground. Its two best assets to achieve these objectives are the photovoltaic panels housed on its wings, which are responsible for allowing it to stay in the air for between three and four months without touching the ground even once, and the artificial intelligence that is responsible for that can take off, fly and land without the intervention of a human pilot.
Skydweller has completed autonomous flight tests using its new ‘fly-by-wire’ control system
In the middle of last year, at the time we visited Skydweller’s facilities in Albacete, this company had already successfully carried out several test flights, but it still had several tests to show that its technology had reached maturity. necessary to take the next relevant step in your itinerary. You have already completed them. And it has just officially announced that has completed autonomous flight tests employing its new fly-by-wire control system, which dispenses with the manual flight controls we are all familiar with and replaces them with an electronic interface.
This does not mean that during the tests there was no person in the cabin of the plane; there was a pilot, but only for safety reasons. Fortunately for this company, everything went well, so the technician was not forced to intervene and the aircraft has managed to exceed the operational safety requirements imposed by the State Aviation Safety Agency (AESA).
However, before being able to carry out commercial operations, this aircraft must pass more tests. His next challenge is to develop the necessary technology to plan payload flights, and after this it will have to demonstrate the feasibility of autonomous unmanned flight. No pilot on board. Skydweller’s industrial plan is to produce five units during 2023 and ten more in 2024, although with the help of one of its strategic partners, the Italian aeronautical company Leonardo, it could manufacture many more if necessary. It doesn’t sound but not bad.
