Solar-powered craft tested for future role in telecommunications

Solar-powered Pathfinder Plus took off yesterday from the Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kaua'i, carrying communications gear. U.S. Navy

By Jan TenBruggencate
Advertiser Kaua'i Bureau

MANA, Kaua'i — The solar-powered aircraft Pathfinder Plus flew from the Pacific Missile Range Facility at Barking Sands yesterday in the first of a series of flights this summer to test its capabilities as a high-altitude "antenna" for tele-communications.

The unmanned vehicle, a wide-flying wing whose upper surface is covered with solar photovoltaic panels, is the latest in a series of similar aircraft to be tested at the range. Officials are moving toward the development of one that will be able to stay aloft for weeks or months at a time without refueling.

"This summer's UAV test flights at PMRF will demonstrate marketable applications of unmanned, solar-powered aircraft," said Wolfgang Kneidl, the missile range's program manager.

This summer's payloads on board the plane, part of its "next-generation telecommunications demonstration" will include digital television broadcast equipment and a kind of cell-phone technology called Mobile Telecommunications-2000, which can carry voice, data, Internet and video images over cell phones.

The plane is expected to take the communications gear as much as 12 miles up.

Pathfinder Plus is part of a program developed by AeroVironment, with financing from NASA's environmental research and sensor program. The cell phone work is partly paid for by Japan's Communications Research Laboratory. One of the partners in the project is Sky Tower, which seeks to develop the technology of winged communications platforms.

NASA and AeroVironment officials say they are working on light fuel cell technology that will allow the aircraft to retain enough power from the day's sunlight to remain aloft at night. At present, the aircraft takes off after dawn, and glides back to Earth in the evening after the sunlight is gone.