Switched has a new home! Huffpost Tech.

Click here to visit the new home of Switched!

Hot on HuffPost Tech:

See More Stories
AOL Tech

Unmanned Spy Plane To Stay Aloft for Five Years

by Terrence O'Brien on March 6, 2008 at 02:25 PM

Unmanned Spy Plane To Stay Aloft for Five Years
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will award contracts to design and build an unmanned spy plane they've dreamed up that will stay aloft for for an amazing five years. The pseudo satellite will circle the globe for years at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, gathering photos, communications, and generally watching everything you do.

The craft will have to answer a number of design challenges, not the least of which is how to keep this thing powered for such a long period of time. The sub-orbital satellite will also have to carry a 1000-pound payload in extremely high winds (and become airborne in the first place).

DARPA would like to have the craft built ASAP, but you know how these things work, the government will be lucky to have non-functional scale model by the year 2020.

From Gizmo Watch

Related links:

Tags: darpa, government, military, spy, surveilance

Comments

2

Add your comments

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

HuffPost AOL Social News Most Popular