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Facebook built a
GIANT Internet
DRONE
FACEBOOK just built a gigantic
solar-powered drone that will stay in
the stratosphere for months at a time, is designed to fly far above commercial
beaming broadband Internet to rural
and hard-to-reach areas.
The drone, called Aquila, is the baby
of Facebook’s year-old Connectivity
Lab. The lab has been developing
new technology as part of the social
network’s mission to “connect
everybody in the world.”
Four billion people don’t have access
to the Internet, and 10% of the
world’s population lacks the necessary Aquila hasn’t taken
infrastructure to get online. To reach flight yet, but the
these people, Facebook is working
on drones, satellites, lasers and
terrestrial Internet technology.
On Thursday, Facebook announced it
had finished construction on its first will run structural
full-sized drone and announced
other project milestones. The team’s
researchers say they’ve found a way to its first test flight.
use lasers to deliver data speeds from
the drones ten times faster than the
industry standard.
Facebook has been working on the
Aquila for a year, building off of
technology it acquired when it bought
14 INTERNATIONAL
UK drone company Ascenta in 2014.
The solar-powered unmanned aircraft
airspace and weather, and to stay in the
air for three months at a time. It could
give Internet access to people located in commercial airspace. During the day,
a 50-mile radius on the ground. it will cruise in circles at 90,000 feet, «Building big planes and selling them
“It’s sort of like a backbone of Internet
using lasers in the sky, that’s the
dream we have,” said Yael Maguire,
the engineering director of Facebook’s
Connectivity Lab.
UK-based team has
done flight testing
on a number of scale
models. Over the next
six months, the group
and other tests and
eventually take it for
The technology is
years away from
being used in the field
-- Facebook doesn’t yet
have an exact timeline.
The Aquila drone looks
like a giant v-shaped so it can fly without a dedicated pilot.
boomerang. It’s 140-
feet in diameter To get the Internet, a laser system will
-- about the same connect the ground and the drone.
wingspan as a Boeing A Facebook team has been working
737 -- and covered in on the laser technology in California,
solar cells. It is made and says it has achieved speeds of tens
of light carbon fiber of gigabytes per second -- that’s fast
that is two to three enough to allow hundreds of thousands
times stronger than of people to access broadband Internet
steel when cured. It simultaneously.
will weigh around
880 pounds when The lab works with Facebook’s Internet.
fully outfitted with org, which has been criticized for
motors, batteries only giving people access to a limited
and communications number of Internet services. But Aquila
equipment. is designed to provide full broadband
Internet. Facebook also won›t operate
It won’t require a the planes itself. Instead, the company
runway. The Aquila plans to work with local providers or
will be launched by governments to actually deploy the
tethering it to a helium balloon and technology, though details are still
floating it straight past the weather and unknown.
soaking up solar power. is not core to our mission of connecting
people,» said Jay Parikh, a VP of
At night, it will save energy by drifting engineering. «We are not going to take
down to 60,000 feet. Though current this stuff and be ‹Facebook ISP.›»
regulations require one pilot on the
ground for each drone, Facebook hopes
to design the Aquila
Saturday, August 01 2015 - ARUBA TRAVELLER