Aurora Flight Sciences' unmanned aircraft SunLight Eagle flew on 12 May. The solar-powered, 34.7m (114ft) wingspan, 75kg (165lb) UAV became airborne at New Mexico State University's Physical Science Laboratory Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Test Center at Las Cruces airport.
A colleague and I thought this looked similar to the Gossamer Condor? What do you think?
For more on the Gossamer Condor and the Kremer Prize in Flight's PDF archive
on May 22, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply
It looks more like the Daedalus human powered aircraft to me.
on May 23, 2009 8:27 PM | Reply
C Keith Martin
Daedalus? I found this entry in the archive - which,incidentally, is a brilliant resource. See this link.
http://www.flightglobal.com/pdfarchive/view/1988/1988%20-%201077.html?search=Daedalus
on May 24, 2009 6:38 PM | Reply
I agree with C Keith, it looks rather like the daedalus human powered aircraft developed by professors (Mark Drela) & students from MIT.
The Gossamer Condor & Albatross (the conceptor of these was Paul MacCready) aircraft had a canard empennage as you can see on this student french web site recalling the history of human powered flight (sorry it is in french):
http://eleves.supaero.fr/club/icare/histo.html
Ion
on June 1, 2009 11:30 PM | Reply
It looks a lot like the Daedalus prototype, the Michelob Light Eagle, with a top-mounted wing support wire added.
Was it a retrofit of the 1987 Light Eagle, or a newly constructed aircraft?