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Comment by plipt | Hacker News Reader

The article mentions that this Skydweller UAS completed a 73 hour flight.

Back in 2022 there was a solar powered Airbus Zephyr drone that was tested over the Southwestern US with a flight time of 64 DAYS. I wonder how this new drone is different and how a 73 hour flight is significant in comparison.

Here is an article about the Zephyr Drone and its crash that ended its nearly record-tying flight:

https://simpleflying.com/airbus-zephyr-flight-ends/

Here is a flight replay from adsbexchange showing one day's worth of its flight path where it traced out the Liberty Bell(?) and the shape of the lower 48 at nearly 70,000ft. (Scrolling through its other dates show more playful flight paths)

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/?icao=ae1313&lat=33.419&lon=-...

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The Skydweller is capable of carrying an ISR (Intelligence/Surveillance/Reconnaissance) equipment load, which is several times heavier than the Zephyr -- not to take away from the Zephyr's accomplishments ("on the shoulders of giants", etc).

The article mentions "wide-area surveillance"[1], which translates to "a lot of cameras" (FLIR, visible light, etc).

You also need more solar and more batteries to power all that ISR.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide-area_motion_imagery (eg. GORGON STARE)

>You also need more solar and more batteries to power all that ISR.

I wonder if it would be feasible to use smaller sensors and on a smaller platform - then combine that data. Similar in concept to Gorgon stare where the idea was to combine data from multiple UAVs to create a larger image to provide a greater simultaneous coverage area.

https://longreads.com/2019/06/21/nothing-kept-me-up-at-night...

Mesh is the fad in the military right now, so I imagine this was designed with that in mind. On the other hand, the military likes its sensor data, so it's always going to go big.

I worked on non-maritime stuff, so I'm not familiar with maritime-specific sensors.

The smaller you make the sensors, often the closer you have to get to the thing being observed.

Cameras, optics, RF circuits, etc.

It looks like that Zephyr drone only weighed about 160lbs and didn't carry any payload. I believe these new Skydweller drones can carry an 800lb payload. Maybe that is the significant difference?

Thanks for the clarification. That is significant

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