Project Aquila: Facebook abandoned plans to build a fleet of planes to deliver internet to areas without it.
About four billion people do not have access to the internet worldwide and since 2014 Facebook has been developing the Aquila project. The ambitious spacecraft would use giant solar motors to distribute internet connections around the world.
Facebook has set up a team in Bridgewater, UK to design, develop and test an aircraft that would use the HAPS system (from the high altitude platform station).
The Aquila drone was designed to stay in the air for months and create a 50-kilometer communication zone for up to 90 days, transmitting a signal that through small ground towers would be converted to Wi-Fi or LTE.
The project as well as the scale of the Aquila were very ambitious: The plane had Boeing 737-sized wings but weighed a third of an electric car. It was designed to fly between 60.000 and 90.000 feet during the day, ie above the altitude of commercial flights.
Facebook said the team was able to prove that such aircraft were viable as it managed to conduct two flight tests. However, problems arose. The company itself announced that the first test flight ended in "structural failure" just a few seconds before landing. Of course he did not specify the term.
The company said that during the project it also made progress on a number of other key areas points of the system. Like for example the integration of millimeter wave (MMW) technology for air-to-ground and point-to-point communication. However, it said it will stop with the project as other aerospace companies have started investing in the technology. So he closed the unit he had in Bridgwater.
"Going forward, we will continue to work with others such as Airbus on the HAPS technology but also generally on all the technologies required to operate the system, such as computers control flight and high-density batteries", said Yael Maguire.
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