NASA Helios

Helios was named after the eponymous sun god of Greek mythology, solar plane, which was developed by NASA and the California company AeroVironment. It was an unmanned light aircraft.

Record

With this aircraft succeeded on 13 August 2001 on Hawaii, to break the world altitude record for non- rocket-propelled aircraft. With a height of 29,413 meters, achieved the almost 25 -year-old record of 25,929 meters of an SR -71 Blackbird spy plane has been outbid. This type of aircraft is to provide an alternative to satellite or be used for research tasks at very high altitudes.

Data

The first test flights took place with battery operation in September 1999. The later record flight was carried out exclusively by the use of solar energy. But the climb took about 6 hours.

The 580 kg heavy aircraft was powered by 14 electric motors. The span was 75.3 m and 10.9 m was greater than that of a Boeing 747-400.

On the wing surface nearly 66,000 high-performance solar cells, the SunPower company were mounted with an efficiency of 22 percent, the 30 kW electric power presented in full sunlight available. The price of solar cells used was just under $ 9,000,000. The airspeed was about 30 to 50 km / h However, the information in the sources to the span, height and reached the old SR -71 record are partly contradictory, however, are of the same order.

Helios crashed on 29 May 2003 about 10 miles west of Kauai, Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. As a cause of the crash is indicated by NASA a problem with the controller of the aircraft. The divergent Phygoidenschwingung could not be stopped in time also initiated emergency procedures. Strong speeding eventually led to the collapse of the structure and therefore to the loss.

Videos

Helios flying over Kauai, Hawaii