In April 2017, billionaire Viktor Vekselberg assured Vladimir Putin that the Renova group of companies was able to create aircraft, powered exclusively by solar energy, and at the same time set a world record with its help. What has changed over the past year?

Fedor Konyukhov on board the flying laboratory Stemme 12. Photo by Denis Belozerov

On July 26, 2016, Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Becard completed the first ever circumnavigation of the world on an aircraft powered solely by solar energy, Solar Impulse 2. It took the Solar Impulse 2 crew just over a year, 117 hours and 51 minutes, to circle the globe. flight from Japan to Hawaii set a record for the longest flight duration solar powered. The Russian team of the Albatross project intends to break the Swiss record. They plan to fly 33,000 km around the world solely on solar energy without using fossil fuels and without stopping in a week.

When to expect a flight

The project is being implemented in three stages, and now Albatross is in the first of them: the project team is testing technological solutions on a flying laboratory - the Stemme S12 aircraft. The key technological components of the future solar glider will be flexible solar heterojunction panels and hybrid energy storage devices. These panels, installed on the Stemme S12 aircraft, will be tested for resistance to different weather conditions, low temperatures and pressure throughout the year. Then it will be the turn of the second stage - the design and construction of a glider for a record flight, taking into account the data obtained during testing. Finally, the third and final stage will be the round-the-world flight itself.

The Russian glider should launch in 2020, and it will be piloted by traveler Fyodor Konyukhov, who has already completed five circumnavigations of the world and, in particular, set a record by flying a hot air balloon around the Earth in 268 hours. Now Konyukhov is becoming accustomed to the status of an aviator and is undergoing training as a pilot at the Minsk Aviation training center"Diamond."

The cost of the project is still difficult to predict; the budget may change due to many reasons, the main ones being the technological component and unforeseen logistics costs. The technological investor of the project was the Renova group of companies.

Flying laboratory Stemme S12. Photo by Denis Belozerov

“We are creating the world's first flying laboratory in the field of photovoltaics. This year we are planning flights in a variety of conditions: in the foothills of Elbrus, Kamchatka, the Urals, and in the Moscow region. All this will help to collect more data on the operation of flexible solar panels in a wide variety of unexpected conditions,” says Mikhail Lifshits, director for development of high-tech assets of the Renova group of companies, chairman of the board of directors of JSC Rotek.

The flying laboratory is a unique testing complex that allows you to observe the operation of solar panels and storage devices under conditions in which no one has tested them before. In fact, the Albatross project team is today acting as pioneers.

What technologies are used

To create an energy-autonomous aircraft, you first need a highly efficient energy source. Especially for the Albatross project, the Scientific and Technical Center for Thin Film Technologies in Energy at MIPT. Ioffe developed a technology for manufacturing so-called flexible heterojunction solar cells with an efficiency of more than 22%. Such cells combine the advantages of thin-film and polycrystalline technologies - they are capable of capturing scattered sunlight and can be installed on the entire surface of the aircraft.

The energy storage system will be based on hybrid storage devices, which consist of lithium-ion batteries and supercapacitors. The former will provide high storage capacity, and the latter will be an effective buffer to protect lithium-ion batteries from increased loads and overheating. Supercapacitors are developed and produced by the TEEMP company, part of the Renova group. Thanks to their special design and the use of specially developed electrolytes and cathode material, TEEMP supercapacitors are lightweight and operate at extreme temperatures (up to -65 °C).

Such highly efficient energy sources will help avoid a fairly common problem in aviation - “thermal runaway”, in which the storage device short-circuits due to its high temperature. Overheating of batteries on the route Japan - Hawaii caused the suspension of the Solar Impulse 2 flight for almost 9 months.

What then

Unmanned aerial vehicles using solar energy can replace satellites. The power source for electric aircraft propulsion systems will be a combination of solar panels and a small but efficient engine. Further development This kind of technology will allow the use of electric propulsion developments for freight and passenger transportation, which, in turn, will lead to saving resources and preserving the environment.

May 12th, 2013

The summer of 2010 will forever go down in aviation history. First manned solar powered airplane made a non-stop flight lasting more than a day. Unique prototype SOLAR PLANE HB-SIA is the brainchild of a Swiss company SolarImpulse and its permanent president Bertrand Piccard.

In his message posted on the company’s website after successful tests aircraft , Picard noted: “Until that day we could not truly count on anyone’s trust. Now we can really show the entire political and economic world that this technology works.”

In the early morning of July 7, thanks to the energy generated by 12 thousand solar cells, installed on a wing more than 64 meters long (quite comparable to the dimensions of the Airbus A340 airliner), an unusual-looking single-seat aircraft weighing one and a half tons took off from the airfield in Payerne (Switzerland). One of the founders, 57-year-old Swiss pilot and businessman Andre Borschberg, was at the helm.

“It was the most amazing flight of my life,” he remarked after landing. “I just sat and watched the battery level rise every hour and wondered if the capacity would last all night. And as a result, I flew for 26 hours without a single drop of fuel or any environmental pollution!”

Not first solar powered plane, built by man, but the first to cross the border between day and night with a pilot on board.

Models SOLAR AIRCRAFT began to appear in the 1970s with the introduction of the first affordable photovoltaic cells to the market, and manned flights began in the 80s. An American team led by Paul McCready created the 2.5 kW Solar Challenger aircraft, which made impressive multi-hour flights. In 1981 he managed to cross the English Channel. And in Europe, Gunter Rohelt from Germany took to the skies on his own Solair 1 model, equipped with two and a half thousand cells with a total power of about 2.2 kW.

In 1990, American Eric Raymond crossed the United States on his Sunseeker. However, the journey with twenty stops took more than two months (121 hours of flight), and the longest segment was about 400 kilometers. Model weighed aircraft only 89 kilograms and was equipped with silicon solar panels.

In the mid-90s, several similar aircraft took part in the Berblinger competition: they were faced with the task of reaching a height of 450 meters and surviving on solar energy of about 500 W per square meter of wing. The prize in 1996 was given to the model of Professor Voight-Nietzschmann from the University of Stuttgart, whose Icare II had a 25-meter energy wing with an area of ​​26 square meters. meters.

In 2001, AeroVironment's solar drone, called Helios, developed specifically for NASA and had a wingspan of more than 70 meters, managed to rise to a height of more than 30 kilometers. Two years later, he encountered turbulence and disappeared somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

In 2005, a small drone with a wingspan of about 5 meters by Alan Cocconi and his company AC Propulsion successfully completed a flight lasting more than 48 hours for the first time. Due to the energy accumulated during the daytime, aircraft was also capable of night flight. Finally, in 2007-2008, the Anglo-American company QuinetiQ carried out successful flights of its aircraft Zephyr for 54 and 83 hours. The car weighed about 27 kg, the wingspan was 12 m, and the flight altitude exceeded 18 km.

Project solar powered aircraft Solar Impulse I would hardly have been able to get out of the swaddle of drawings and sketches if not for the energy of the tireless Bertrand Piccard - doctor, traveler, businessman and record-breaking aviator. However, it seems that genes also helped.

The innovator's grandfather Auguste Picard was a famous physicist, a friend of Einstein and Marie Curie, one of the pioneers of aviation and underwater science, the inventor of the first deep-sea vehicle and stratospheric balloon. Having overcome a 15-kilometer altitude in a hot air balloon in the early 1930s, he became the first person in the world to see with his own eyes the curvature of the surface of the globe.

Then Auguste was pulled down, and the inventor built a deep-sea vehicle, which he called a bathyscaphe. After several joint dives, his son Jacques Piccard became so passionate about exploring the secrets of the World Ocean that he became one of the pioneers who visited the bottom of the Mariana Trench (depth 11 km). Then, using his father's work as a basis, Jacques built the world's first submarine for tourists, as well as a mesoscape for exploring the Gulf Stream.

Thanks to his father, Bertrand Piccard, born in 1958, had the unique opportunity to personally meet outstanding people, who largely determined his future: the famous Swiss rescue pilot Hermann Geiger, with whom he made the first flight across the Alps, record-breaking diver Jacques Mayol, who taught him to dive in Florida, one of the pillars of world astronautics, Wernher von Braun, who introduced him to astronauts and by NASA employees.

At the age of 16, returning from Florida after another practical course in deep-sea diving, Bertrand made his first air trip, discovering a hang glider. Is it any wonder that it was he who soon became one of the pioneers of this sport in Europe. Years later, Picard not only became the founder of the Swiss Hang Gliding Federation and a professional instructor, but also tried everything possible: aerial acrobatics, hot air ballooning, parachuting. Several times Picard became the European champion in this sport, and finally, he was the first to fly over the Swiss-Italian Alps on a motorized hang glider.

Imperceptibly, the “airy” hobby also became a professional laboratory for him. Interested in the behavior of people in extreme situations, Picard entered the department of psychiatry and a few years later received a doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lausanne in the field of psychotherapy, after which he opened his own practice. The subject of particular interest for Bertrand was the techniques of medical hypnosis: he received the missing knowledge both at universities in Europe and the USA, as well as from followers of Taoism in Southeast Asia.

It was this interest that brought Picard back to the skies. In 1992, Chrysler staged the first ever transatlantic race. balloons, called the Chrysler Challenge. Belgian aviator Wim Verstraaten invited Picard as a co-pilot - he was sure that having a psychotherapist on board who was proficient in hypnosis could be a good advantage over other teams. And so it happened. The crew of Verstraten and Picard easily completed the marathon and won the historic race, landing in Spain after a five-day flight of five thousand kilometers.

For Picard, flight was not just a revelation, but also a new way of interacting with nature. After 18 years of hang gliding, he had a new dream - to fly around the whole world without a motor or rudder, relying on the will of the wind.

And the dream came true. Even if not on the first try. The sponsors were Swiss watch manufacturer Breitling and the International Olympic Committee. On January 12, 1997, after three years of preparation, a balloon called the Breitling Orbiter took off from an airfield in Switzerland, but due to technical problems it landed within six hours. Breitling Orbiter 2 took off in February 1998, but again failed to reach its destination. This time the stop occurred in Burma, after the Chinese authorities refused to provide Picard with an air corridor. This flight was the longest balloon journey in history (more than nine days), but the goal was still not achieved.

Finally, the third balloon left Switzerland in March 1999 and landed in Egypt after a continuous flight lasting almost 20 days and covering more than 45 thousand kilometers. With his unprecedented journey, Piccard broke seven world records, earned several honorary scientific titles and was included in encyclopedias along with his famous father and grandfather.

Breitling Orbiter 3 was housed at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in the United States, and Bertrand Piccard wrote several books and became a welcome guest at numerous lectures and seminars.

In 2003, the tireless Picard announced a new, even more ambitious undertaking, taking on the creation of a manned solar powered aircraft, capable of flying around the entire globe. This is how the project appeared SolarImpulse.

Picard's partner and irreplaceable CEO of the company was the Swiss pilot and businessman Andre Borschberg. He was born in Zurich, graduated in engineering from the Federal Polytechnic Institute of Lausanne (EPFL), received a degree in management from the legendary Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and has since accumulated extensive experience as the founder and manager of a wide variety of business projects. In addition, with early years Andre was fond of aviation - he studied at the Swiss Air Force school and received dozens of licenses giving the right professional management airplanes and helicopters of all conceivable categories.

Borschberg worked for five years at one of the world's largest consulting companies, McKinsey, after which he founded his own venture fund, launched two high-tech companies, and created a charitable foundation.

In 2003, in Lausanne, Picard and Borschberg conducted preliminary studies that confirmed the fundamental engineering feasibility of implementing Picard's concept. Calculations confirmed that to create aircraft on solar powered theoretically possible. In November 2003, the project was officially launched and prototype development began.

Since 2005, the Royal Institute of Meteorology in Brussels has simulated trial virtual flights of a model aircraft in real conditions at the airports of Geneva and Zurich. The main task there was a calculation of the optimal route, because you will be under the clouds covering the sun for a long time, SOLAR PLANE could not. And finally, in 2007, production of the aircraft began.

In 2009, firstborn HB-SIA was ready for test flights. In the process of creating the design, engineers faced two main tasks. It was necessary to minimize the weight aircraft , while simultaneously achieving maximum power availability and efficiency. The first goal was achieved through the use carbon fiber, specially developed “filling” and by getting rid of everything unnecessary. For example, the cockpit did not have a heating system, so Borschberg had to use a special thermal suit.

The main issue, for obvious reasons, has become the issue of obtaining, accumulating and optimally using solar energy. On a typical afternoon, each square meter of the earth's surface receives about a thousand watts, or 1.3 "horsepower of heat." 200 square meters of photocells with 12% efficiency produce about 6 kilowatts of energy. Is this too much? Let's just say that the legendary Wright brothers had about the same amount at their disposal in 1903.

Pa wing surface SOLAR PLANE More than 12 thousand cells were installed. Their efficiency could be higher - at the level of those panels that are installed on the ISS. But more efficient cells also have more weight. In zero gravity, this does not play a role (rather, when lifting energy farms into orbit using space “trucks”). However SOLAR PLANE Picara had to continue flying at night using the energy stored in the batteries. And here every extra kilogram played a critical role. The solar cells turned out to be the heaviest component of the machine (100 kilograms, or about a quarter of the aircraft's weight), so optimizing this ratio became the most difficult task for the engineering team.

Finally, on SOLAR PLANE installed a unique onboard computer system, which evaluates all flight parameters and provides necessary information the pilot as well as the ground crew. A total of engineers SolarImpulse During the project implementation, about 60 new technological solutions in the field of materials and solar energy were created.

In 2010, the first and very successful test flights began, and already in July Andre Borschberg made his historic round-the-clock flight.

“By morning, the batteries still had about 10 percent charge,” said an inspired Borschberg. “This is a wonderful and completely unexpected result for us.” Our plane is the size of an airliner and weighs as much as a car, but uses no more energy than a moped. This is the beginning of a new era, and not just in the aviation industry. We have shown the potential of renewable energy: if we can fly with it, we can do many other things. With the help of new technologies, we can afford to maintain our usual standard of living, but consume much less energy. After all, we are still too dependent on engines internal combustion and prices for resources!”

HB-SIA- technical data of the prototype

• Flight altitude - 8,500 m
• Maximum weight - 1,600 kg
• Cruising speed - 70 km/h
• Minimum speed - 35 km/h
• Wingspan - 63.4 m
• Wing area - 200 sq.m
• Length - 21.85 m
• Height - 6.4 m
• Power power plant— 4×7.35 kW
• The diameter of the power plant screws is 3.5 m
• Battery weight - 400 kg
• Efficiency of solar cells (11,628 monocrystals) - 22.5%

Does solar aviation future? Of course, Borschberg promises. In 1903, the Wright brothers were sure that crossing the Atlantic by plane was impossible. And 25 years later, Charles Lindbergh managed to fly from New York to Paris. It took the same number of years to create the first 100-seat airliner. The team of Picard and Borschberg is only at the beginning of the journey; the maximum speed of the working prototype is no more than 70 kilometers per hour. But the first step has already been taken.

However, in SolarImpulse already know what will happen next. In 2012-2013, a prototype SOLAR PLANE The HB-SIB, with updated equipment and constant cabin pressure, is set to make the first round-the-world trip on a solar wing. The span of the lifting surface will be about 80 meters - greater than that of any modern airliner. The flight is expected to take place at an altitude of 12 kilometers. True, it will not be continuous. A crew change of two pilots will require five landings. After all, the flight at a still low linear speed will take more than three to four days.

Be that as it may, Picard's project inspires optimism. Perhaps, in a couple of decades, airlines will finally stop repeating the sacramental mantra that soon “the oil will run out.” Will it end? So that's great. We will fly not on kerosene, but on solar energy!

And I’ll also remind you about, and also find out what cubes it was made of The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -

Electric planes, which fly using the energy of sunlight, are a one-piece product. Each is unique and is created with private investment, rather for image and research purposes than with the intention of launching such a unit in mass production. Perhaps the most famous projects in the field of solar aeronautics are now being created in Switzerland - these are airplanes SolarImpuls And SolarStratos. On the first of them, Bertrand Piccard, the grandson of the inventor of the stratospheric balloon, Auguste Piccard, flew around the world three years ago. ABOUT SolarStratos The “Attic” is already there - with it the Swiss pilots plan to ascend into the stratosphere. In the summer of 2018, the American company Bye Aerospace tested the StratoAirNet family of aircraft Solesa— such aircraft, according to the company, can be used for military patrols, mapping and search and rescue operations. The Russian industrial holding ROTEC decided to keep up with global trends and also began developing a “solar” aircraft. The project was called "Albatross".

What will fly?

The Albatross project consists of two stages. The first is the creation and testing of a flying photovoltaics laboratory, which will collect information on the operation of solar panels, energy storage devices and other systems during flight. At the second stage, the actual plane will be built, on which the pilot will fly around the Earth in five days, without ever landing.

The flying laboratory is a German motorized two-seat glider Stemme S12, equipped with solar photovoltaic cells, a hybrid energy storage system (supercapacitor and lithium-ion battery) and scientific equipment.

“Due to the fact that this is a laboratory, we needed a very high aerodynamic quality in order to fly for a long time, and enough space to accommodate the equipment, plus the possibility of high flights. Therefore, an aircraft was chosen that combines these qualities,” says Mikhail Lifshits, Chairman of the Board of Directors of ROTEC JSC, head of the Albatross project, pilot. — The aerodynamic quality of this 1-53 glider is the best in the world today. Equipment - load devices, measuring systems, positioning - is located in the rear compartment. Everything related to science and measurements is made in Russia. And the testing platform is German.

Evgenia Shcherbina / Chrdk.

Aerodynamic efficiency can be roughly thought of as the distance that an aircraft can cover in a calm environment by gliding alone. Its value of 1-53 means that the aircraft can glide 53 kilometers from an altitude of one kilometer, gradually descending. For example, an albatross that can catch warm rising air currents and due to them, it can hover over the surface of the ocean for a long time, has a lift-to-drag ratio of 1-20 - more than that of most aircraft. Only some bombers and specially designed gliders can glide longer than an albatross, such as Voyager, which made the first non-stop, non-refueling flight around the Earth.

According to Lifshits, despite the fact that the Albatross designers take into account the world experience of flying on electric aircraft, they still did not have reliable data on how solar modules and energy storage devices behave when different types illumination, at different altitudes and in different climatic conditions, which is why the need for a flying laboratory arose.

— There are scientific and practical centers in St. Petersburg, Vladivostok, Moscow, but there the elements of photovoltaics are located on the ground. But how much will we collect at different angles of attack, at different positions of the sun, at different latitudes, altitudes, with different underlying surfaces, at different times of the day? Essentially, there is no systemic answer. And in order to design an aircraft correctly, you need to have calculation bases. That's why we designed a flying laboratory. This is the first stage of the project, and it is already unique, because there has never been such high-quality research in the world,” says Lifshitz.

Solar modules for the aircraft will be made by a Russian group of companies Hevel. Their efficiency - 22.5% - is not as high as that of SolarStratos(24.6%), but higher than the efficiency of conventional monocrystalline silicon batteries (up to 20%). However, according to Lifshitz, daytime output and the ability of the cells to operate in diffuse light are much more important for flight, because providing direct sunlight is quite problematic. The Albatross will not use conventional monosilicon photocells, which are used in solar power plants, but heterojunction cells, which are more efficient and capable of operating in diffuse light. Similar semiconductor photocells are used in the design of spacecraft.

Solar modules are attached to both the upper and lower surfaces of the laboratory glider's wing to collect sunlight reflected from the earth's surface. The appearance of the future aircraft depends on the accumulated data, but it is already clear that it needs large wings. The approximate wingspan of the aircraft, which so far exists only on paper, is 30 meters.

How will it fly?

The photovoltaics laboratory is currently undergoing a series of tests: flights have already taken place in the area of ​​the Severka airfield in the Moscow region, but flights throughout Russia are also planned. And from January 2019, the design of the aircraft itself, the Albatross, will begin. The authors intend to involve designers from Australia and Britain in the development of the engine. The Albatross will take flight in 2020 and will be piloted by the famous Russian traveler Fyodor Konyukhov. Now he is training and studying to become a glider and small aircraft pilot in Belarus.

“You see, I’m 67 years old, and I’m still studying,” Konyukhov laughs. — By 2020, when I have to fly on the Albatross, I will already have many hours of flight time on conventional aircraft. I know the sky, I've flown in a hot air balloon around the world.

The Russian “solar” plane will make its round-the-world flight at the flight altitude of conventional passenger planes—about 11 kilometers. The plane's speed will reach approximately 200-220 kilometers per hour.

“At an altitude, respectively, the wind is 300 kilometers per hour and our speed is 200 kilometers per hour - so we will move at a speed of about 500 kilometers per hour,” the traveler reasons.

Konyukhov collected data on the behavior of the wind at different altitudes during his trip around the Earth in a hot air balloon - they will also be used in calculating the flight of the Albatross.

It is expected that during the day the plane will climb maximum height, and at night plan several hundred kilometers, reaching 8-10 kilometers above sea level by morning. A high altitude for flight is needed not only because of the strong wind, but also because there are no thunderstorms at such an altitude. Getting caught in thunderclouds is very dangerous.

— When I was flying in a hot air balloon, I had the following attitude: “At night you should see the stars, during the day you should see the sun. If you don’t see, then you’re falling,” says Konyukhov.

He also trains to survive five days of near-motion in a small airplane cabin. The autopilot will allow you to take your mind off control and relax. The traveler will also have a special liquid diet, light and balanced. In case of evacuation, the entire plane will be lowered by parachute.

Photo courtesy of the Skolkovo Foundation press service

The flight is planned to be carried out in the Southern Hemisphere, since there is too much land in the Northern Hemisphere and, accordingly, countries with which it would be necessary to negotiate about flying in their airspace, and this is difficult. So most of the way there will be ocean under the wing of the Albatross. Now the authors of the project are negotiating with the Australian government to fly over it, and the Albatross will also fly over New Zealand, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.

Also in 2020, the plane SolarStratos will also take its first flight. But, according to Lifshitz, the projects have no competition. The Swiss plan to rise to a maximum altitude of 25 kilometers, and the flight will last only a few hours. To facilitate the design, the aircraft cabin will be unpressurized, so the pilot will spend these hours in a spacesuit, which, by the way, is being developed Russian enterprise"Star". The Albatross will be in flight for five days, and the pilot will remain in a pressurized cabin without a spacesuit.

Why will it fly?

According to Mikhail Lifshits, for ROTEC in the Albatross project, it is not the financial component that is important, but rather the research component.

— It is clear that we are not the first to take on such a project. We looked closely at what was happening in the world, starting with Picard, who flew around the world. It took him two years, 17 landings, each of which involved repairs to the aircraft. After that there were attempts. We know about these projects and are friends with everyone to one degree or another. And the first thing we decided to do was to take into account their mistakes. Not so much mistakes as trying to make the project more applied, technical, scientific,” says the pilot.

According to him, no one needs mass production of manned “solar” aircraft capable of flying around the Earth at a time. From a commercial point of view, solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles are more promising.

— There are now many projects of solar-powered atmospheric and stratospheric satellites, but so far they are only carrying themselves. We are trying to make a full-fledged aircraft with the highest payload,” explains Lifshitz.

“In addition, with the help of such a device it will be possible to test some technologies in the field of energy storage devices, fuel cells, new coatings and materials,” adds Oleg Dubnov, vice president, executive director of the cluster of energy efficient technologies of the Skolkovo Foundation.

The creators of Albatross also hope that the success of the project will raise the country’s prestige and stimulate the development of fuel-free aviation. They expect that in the future, autonomous aircraft will replace satellites in a number of industries; they can be used to monitor the surfaces of oceans, forests and lands Agriculture.

“These flights and solutions will show how much solar energy can be used now, whether the time has come and whether technologies have reached the level of development when it is possible to do this,” says Dubnov.

Source: https://www.kp.ru/daily/26676/3699473/

Today you won’t surprise anyone with solar-powered devices. Nevertheless, the first test flight of the solar-powered stratospheric aircraft SolarStratos, which took place on May 5, can be called a significant event.

How is this Swiss SolarStratos different from its fellow solar glider, famous for circumnavigating the globe with 16 landings in one year, you ask? Or from the solar-powered apparatus of Fedor Konyukhov, who intends to fly around the Earth on it without landing in 120 hours?

The difference is that SolarStratos is designed for higher altitudes. If Fedor Konyukhov plans to climb 16 kilometers up, then the Swiss stratospheric plane is designed for flights at an altitude of 25 kilometers and higher. There is no weightlessness there yet, but experts call these layers of the stratosphere already near space. The development of this area is considered very promising direction. The fact is that here you can launch atmospheric communication satellites, which are several times cheaper than space satellites. Or surveillance satellites, they will not only save money, but also provide more accurate information. After all, from a height of 20-30 kilometers it is possible to more accurately determine, for example, the boundaries of a forest fire than from near-Earth orbit (over 160 km).

By the way, not long ago Russia began testing the Sova solar-powered atmospheric satellite. But this is a small drone weighing 12 kilograms and a wingspan of 9 meters.

And SolarStratos is the world's first full-fledged two-seat stratospheric aircraft. It weighs 450 kilograms, the fuselage length is 8.5 meters, the wingspan is 25 meters. Moreover, 22 square meters of surface are occupied by solar panels.

In the spring, the Swiss Federal Civil Aviation Administration granted SolarStratos project manager Rafael Domian permission to conduct flight tests. And at the beginning of May the miracle plane made its first flight. Test pilot Damian Hichier raised the device to a modest altitude of 300 meters during a short 7-minute flight. The plane will begin to ascend into the stratosphere when the designers are convinced that the device is working perfectly.

The problem is that the pilot has no right to make a mistake: in order to make the plane as light as possible, the engineers did not equip the cabin with systems for maintaining normal pressure and temperature. To survive at a temperature of minus 56 degrees and atmospheric pressure tens and hundreds of times lower than on the surface of the Earth, both pilots put on spacesuits. What’s interesting: the Swiss chose the Russian “Falcon” spacesuit among various options; it is not intended for spacewalks, but allows it to withstand the conditions of interstellar space. The only negative is the inability to use a parachute in case of an emergency. Therefore, increased demands are placed on the safety of a stratospheric aircraft.

“We are very pleased that we can demonstrate a working technology that allows us to achieve more than devices using fossil fuels,” said Rafael Domyan. — Electric and solar cars will displace internal combustion engines from the market in the 21st century. And our aircraft can fly at altitudes of 25,000 meters and this opens the door to commercial electric and solar aviation opportunities within near space.

Domyan hopes that flights to the stratosphere can be sold to tourists.

TTX SolarStratos

• Length – 8.5 meters
• Wingspan – 24.9 meters
• Weight – 450 kilograms
• Autonomy reserve – more than 24 hours
• Drive – 4-blade propeller, diameter – 2.2 meters
• Motor – electric power 32kW,
• Motor efficiency – 90%
• Number of pilots – 2
• Power – solar energy
• Solar battery area – 22 square meters

The American company Titan Aerospace demonstrated a prototype of its solar-powered UAV, which, according to the manufacturer, can stay in the air for up to 5 years. This device will cruise at an altitude of about 20 thousand meters and photograph the surface or act as an atmospheric satellite. Developers from Titan Aerospace are ready to fly their first aircraft in 2014. It is worth noting that their concept may have a promising future.

Traditional space satellites today cope quite well with their responsibilities, but they have a number of disadvantages. For example, the satellites themselves are quite expensive, putting them into orbit also costs a considerable amount of money, and besides, they cannot be returned back if they have already been put into operation. But the American company Titan Aerospace is coming up with an alternative to space satellites that will be free from all these problems. The unmanned high-altitude aircraft, called Solara, is designed to operate as an “atmospheric satellite” - that is, to fly autonomously in the upper layers of the Earth’s atmosphere for quite a long time.

The company is currently working on two models of the Solara drone. The first of them, Solara 50, has a wingspan of 50 meters, its length is 15.5 meters, its weight is 159 kg, and its payload is up to 32 kg. The more massive Solara 60 has a wingspan of 60 meters and can carry up to 100 kg. payload. The tail of the device and the upper wings are covered with 3 thousand solar cells, which allow generating up to 7 kWh of energy during the day. At its cruising altitude of 20,000 meters, the atmospheric satellite will be above the cloud level, which means it will not be affected by weather factors. The collected energy will be stored in onboard lithium-ion batteries to power the engine, autopilot, telemetry systems and sensors at night. It is assumed that the atmospheric satellite will be able to operate completely autonomously, staying in the upper layers of the Earth's atmosphere for up to 5 years, and then return to the ground, so that its payload can be returned, and the device itself can be disassembled for spare parts.

It is reported that the cruising speed of the unmanned vehicle will be about 100 km/h, and the operational radius will be more than 4.5 million kilometers. According to experts, the drone will mostly fly in circles over a certain area of ​​the earth's surface. Such applications include object tracking, surveillance, real-time mapping, and monitoring of weather, crops, forests, accident sites, and virtually any task that a regular low-altitude satellite can handle.

On top of that, Titan Aerospace experts say that each drone will be able to provide cellular coverage of 17 thousand square kilometers of the earth's surface at once, maintaining communication with more than 100 ground towers. Currently, the Americans have already tested smaller models of atmospheric satellites and hope to release full-size versions of the Solara 50 and 60 devices later in 2013.

By preliminary estimates experts, multispectral imaging of the earth's surface using Solara devices will cost only $5 per square kilometer: this is immediately 7 times lower than the prices for satellite data of comparable quality. In addition, such drones will be able to provide communication services to an area within a radius of 30 km, which is quite comparable to a modern metropolis like London or Moscow with most of their suburbs. IN normal conditions In megacities, there is no need for such a system yet, but the company believes that their drones can be useful either in case of emergency situations or in underdeveloped countries. Titan Aerospace says that their unmanned vehicles Solara has already become interested in the famous computer corporation Google, which can use them as part of own project Internet Africa.

For now, two things solidify Solara as an atmospheric satellite. The first is the altitude of its flight. The device is designed to fly at an altitude of more than 20,000 meters, which allows it to be almost above all possible atmospheric phenomena. The device hangs above the clouds and various weather conditions, where environment and winds tend to be fairly stable or at least very predictable. Being at such a height, about 45,000 square kilometers of the earth’s surface immediately falls into the drone’s field of view. Therefore the base station cellular communications, installed on Solara, could replace 100 such stations on the Earth's surface.

The second very important thing is that the device is powered by solar energy. All accessible surfaces on the wings and tail of the drone are covered with special solar panels, and lithium-ion batteries are mounted in the wings. During the day, Solara is able to generate an impressive amount of energy, which is enough to keep the batteries charged for the rest of the night. Since the solar-powered drone does not need to be refueled, it can stay in the air for up to 5 years. At this time, it can either circle over one place, or (if you want the device to make long-distance flights) be able to fly a distance of about 4,500,000 kilometers with a cruising speed of just under 60 knots (about 111 km/h). At the same time, the five-year flight life of the device is determined only by the life cycle of some of its components, so there are all the prerequisites for this drone to be in the sky for much longer.

Information sources:
-http://gearmix.ru/archives/4918
-http://aenergy.ru/4126
-http://lenta.ru/news/2013/08/19/solar
-http://nauka21vek.ru/archives/52274