Facebook announced its completely built solar powered unmanned plane “Aquila” that beams down internet connectivity from the sky.
Few months back, Facebook has announced the solar-powered drone “Aquila” at its F8 conference in San Francisco. It will be powered by solar panels on its wings and it will be able to stay at altitudes of more than 60,000 feet for months at a time.
Since Facebook launched Internet.org, it is looking ways to provide internet connectivity to the more than 4 billion people who are not yet online. Many of these people live within range of at least a 3G wireless signal. Last year, Facebook have worked with mobile operators to provide basic internet services for more than a billion people across 17 countries.
But 10 percent of the world’s population lives in remote locations with no internet infrastructure, and the kinds of infrastructure technologies used everywhere else — things like fiber-optic cable, microwave repeaters and cell towers — may be a challenge to deploy cost-effectively in these regions.
The Facebook’s Connectivity Lab is launched to accelerate the development of a new set of technologies that can drastically change the economics of deploying internet infrastructure.
The Connectivity Lab team now has announced two major milestones in this work:
A full-scale version of Aquila — the high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft designed by the aerospace team in the UK — is now complete and ready for flight testing.
It has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, but weighs less than a car and can stay in the air for months at a time. It weighs hundreds of times less due to its unique design and carbon-fiber frame. When deployed, it will be able to circle a remote region for up to 90 days, beaming connectivity down to people from an altitude of 60,000 to 90,000 feet.
Watch this video of Facebook’s Connectivity Lab which brings connectivity to the billions of people who are unconnected today.
Facebook also made a breakthrough in laser communications technology. The laser communications team have successfully designed and lab-tested a new laser that can deliver data at gigabits per second. That is approximately 10 times faster than the previous state-of-the-art in the industry, and it can accurately connect with a point the size of a dime from more than 10 miles away.
They are now starting to test these lasers in real-world conditions. When finished, the laser communications system can be used to connect the aircraft with each other and with the ground, making it possible to create a stratospheric network that can extend to even the remotest regions of the world.
This effort is important because 10% of the world’s population lives in areas without existing internet infrastructure. To affordably connect everyone, there is a need to build completely new technologies.
Facebook Founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg said, “Using aircraft to connect communities using lasers might seem like science fiction. But science fiction is often just science before its time. Over the coming months, we will test these systems in the real world and continue refining them so we can turn their promise into reality.”
