Photos and movies of aircraft and huge full-wing aircraft that freely fly over the sky with the power of solar power generation

NASA aircraft "Helios" flying with solar cellsAlthough I have already told you that there are several other aircraft that can fly with the power of sunlight, so I will introduce them. There are various manned aircraft such as Helios' siblings like a single aircraft, planned ones and so on. Helios was an aircraft that could fly even on Mars, but is he thinking about similar uses?

Details are as follows.
"Pathfinder" became the first step of all wing aircraft leading to Helios. Later ones seem to follow the design of Pathfinder.

NASA - Past Project ERAST - Pathfinder / Pathfinder Plus

Pathfinder EC 97 - 44138 - 2: Pathfinder ground preparations prior to altitude record setting flight of 71,500 feet


Pathfinder EC 96-43817-9: Pathfinder aircraft in flight


Pathfinder EC 95-43207-76: Pathfinder aircraft in flight


Improved version of Pathfinder, Pathfinder Plus. In August 1998 it reached the stratosphere with an altitude of 24,000 m.
Pathfinder-Plus ED02-0161-1: Pathfinder-Plus flight in Hawaii



Pathfinder-Plus EC 98-44629-53: Pathfinder-Plus on a flight in Hawaii



Pathfinder-Plus EC 98-44621-25: Pathfinder-Plus on a flight over Hawaiian island N'ihau


The third generation of all wing aircraft "Centurion".
Centurion solar-powered high-altitude aircraft

Centurion EC 97-43965-12: Quarter-scale Model of Solar-powered Centurion Ultra-high-altitude Flying Wing in Flight during First Flight Tests




It is the fourth generation of all wing aircraftHeliosA movie that fly.

YouTube - Helios Solar Powered Aircraft


"Gossamer Penguin" that seems to appear in the bird human contest. Easy one with a solar panel attached to a man power plane.
Albatross ECN-13413: Solar-powered Gossamer Penguin in flight


A single-seat aircraft "SUNSEEKER" whose plan began around 1986.

SUNSEEKER PAGE

It was successful in the test flight in 1989, in 1990 it took a flight across 21 countries in 121 hours.






Flying boat "PlanetSolar".

PlanetSolar.org - Bienvenue

You can watch a movie from "Watch the boat evolve in these computer generated images!" On the site top. Can you really fly ...?





"SoLong" succeeded in flight over 24 hours.

'SoLong' Solar UAV Flies For 24 Hours - Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)

It is a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle). It seems that the difference between UAV and radio control is whether it is a practical purpose or not.


Camera is installed and you can check the state of the flight.


"Sky-Sailor". This guy is also a UAV.
Sky-Sailor: Solar Autonomous Airplane for Mars exploration

A prototype was completed in 2005, successfully flighting for the first 24 hours in 2007.




A movie can be seen from "Media" → "Videos" on the official website.


"Solar Impulse" is a plan to make manned flight around the world just by solar power generation.

Solar Impulse - index







QinetiQ (Kinetik) 's UAV, "Zephyr". It seems that it reached a height of 27,000 feet (about 8 km). Anything can go up to 130,000 thousand feet (about 40 kilometers) higher than the flight altitude of airliners in planning.


18:53 Correction:
Some of the facts were misunderstood in Zephyr, so we fixed it.

· Reference Link
For the history of solar aircraft, the following details.

Design on airplane -5