Flying Solo and Solar to Mars Global Design of a Solar Autonomous Airplane for Sustainable Flight
André Noth, M. Walter Engel, Roland Siegwart · 2006
The Sky-Sailor project aims to build an ultralightweight solar autonomous airplane capable of continuous flight over days and nights. It is intended to be used as a demonstrator of a Mars exploration airplane. In this article, we present the work done by the Autonomous Systems Lab of Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) on the global design of the airplane. A first prototype was built and tested with success. Furthermore, the realization of a lightweight control and navigation system is presented and discussed.