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https://totaltele.com/airbus-calls-for-investors-as-zephyr-business-prepares-for-lift-off/
Airbus calls for investors as Zephyr business prepares for lift-off
Posted by Harry Baldock | Jan 23, 2023 | Investment, 5G, INFRASTRUCTURE, Satellite, Towers, Digital Divide, Products & Services, Networks, Europe, North America, News
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The solar-powered Zephyr drone will serve as a flying base station, delivering mobile connectivity to customers in hard-to-reach areas
Today, aviation giant Airbus has revealed that is seeking external investment as it prepares to scale up, spin-off, and commercially launch its Zephyr drone connectivity business.
Flying around 21km above the surface of the Earth, high above weather and commercial aircraft, Airbus’s Zephyr drone will act as a High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), beaming down connectivity to customers too difficult or expensive to reach with terrestrially technology.
The solar-powered drone can remain airborne for months at a time and be piloted directly to in-need locations, whether remote areas lacking in traditional connectivity or areas with high temporary demand, such as those struck by natural disasters.
In addition to Zephyr’s connectivity capabilities, the device’s payload is also modular, allowing it to carry cameras and other sensors for observational purposes.
Airbus has been working alongside Japanese operator NTT and other partners to develop this technology for some years now, with the device having already racked up over 3,000 flight hours by the end of 2021.
By last summer, Zephyr had made significant technical advances, recording a single continuous flight for 26 days, breaking the record for the longest flight by an unmanned aircraft.
When complete, Airbus said it hopes each Zephyr drone will be able to fly continuously for up to six months using the latest solar and battery technologies.
Airbus officially launched its own HAPS Services Business unit last year, aiming to further develop Zephyr technology and target the 3.7 billion people current severely underserved by existing connectivity infrastructure.
Now, however, it seems that Airbus feels the unit will function better as an independent business, with the aviation giant having hired Morgan Stanley to help find and onboard new investors to help rapidly grow the fledging business.
This new unit will be called Aalto.
“Airbus is not a company that offers telecom services,” Samer Halawi, the CEO of Airbus’s HAPS business, told the Financial Times. “The idea of the carve-out is to bring like-minded partners to the equation and to be able to scale this business.”
According to reports, Airbus intends to retain majority control of the business, with talks with various customers and commercial partners already underway.
Halawi says that Zephyr is now “at the final design stage”, with commercial services expected to launch before the end of the year.
As part of the commercialisation process, Aalto expects to set up five or six ‘Aalto ports’ in locations including the US and the Middle East, each of which will serve as a base of operation for Zephyr drones.
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So close, but in the end, no superlative cigar. After 64 straight days of solar-powered flight, the US Army’s Airbus-built Zephyr UAV reportedly plunged from the skies over Arizona, just hours shy of breaking the all-time record for continuous navigation by an aircraft.
When it took off on June 18, the Airbus-produced Zephyr began what its US Army operators had hoped would be a 30-day solar power flight to surpass the previous mark of 26 days. Instead, the UAV plowed through that time target and – in aerial Duracell Bunny fashion – just kept going and going, with nobody involved in the project quite sure when it would return to earth. That ultimately occurred with a crash, reported Simple Flying, after the high-altitude platform system (HAPS) dropped contact with controllers and plunged into the Arizona desert on August 19.
Though Zephyr barely missed beating the all-time record, the Airbus UAV did surpass the 60-day objective US Army officials had set for the next test flight the solar-powered craft was to make. That will now presumably be upgraded for more ambitious targets.
Designed to swoop in the stratosphere at 60,000 to 70,000 feet, the Army had cruised Zephyr at about half those altitudes, where tropospheric elements like wind and rain posed more risks to the craft.
Airbus said the UAV has a wingspan of 25 meters (entirely covered with solar panels), has a total weight of 75 kg, and is equipped with frontline and secondary batteries that alternate when the sun is no longer shining on its position. Because of those reserves, Zephyr requires no additional fuel, and can – as emphatically now demonstrated – stay aloft for months at a time.