Solar-powered craft can drone on for months, reaches new high

The Caihong drone flew over 20,000 meters high. The Caihong, or Rainbow, solar-powered drone, developed by the China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics, set the record during a test flight last week at an unidentified airport in Northwest China. The designer explained that normally, a fuel-powered military drone can fly to a maximum altitude of up to 8,000 m while a handful of top surveillance drones like the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 Global Hawk in the United States are capable of reaching altitudes of 18,000 m. In the category of solar-powered drones, Chinese institutes have developed some experimental models, but they are smaller and technologically unsophisticated compared with the Caihong, and their highest operational altitudes are at thousands of meters, Shi said. Wang said Beihang University in Beijing, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in Jiangsu province and Northwestern Polytechnical University in Shaanxi province had made experimental, solar-powered drones to verify technologies and their types "could hardly fly any higher than 10,000 m". Previously, the US and United Kingdom developed solar-powered drones capable of flying as high as 20,000 m. The altitude record for a solar-powered drone, 29,524 m, was made by the US Helios Prototype, developed by AeroVironment Inc in California, in August 2001.