Facebook conducted a successful test flight of its WiFi drone

05 July 2017
Facebook officials reported the successful completion of a test flight of their massive unmanned WiFi drone. The previous test ended with the drone crashing during the landing phase. This successful test was a significant step forward toward Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's grand goal. According to this project, such drones in the future will provide Internet access to the most remote and hard-to-reach corners of our planet. The previous drone flight, code-named Aquila, took place last December and ended in tragedy when the drone crashed while trying to land. According to representatives of the social network, the data obtained during the first, unsuccessful, test flight made it possible to achieve significant improvements in the operation of the flying machine. Zuckerberg's project is truly grandiose. He intends to build a squadron of drones that will provide fast, high-quality Internet access to nearly 4 billion people on the planet who do not currently have access, at least steadily, to the global network. It is not a quick and extremely costly task. The weight of the drone is about 450 kg, and its wingspan is larger than that of a Boeing 737. The maximum speed that the drone can reach at altitude is about 128 km/h. It is planned that most of the time it will fly on autopilot, but a team of specially trained people will take care of some maneuvers, as well as manual control in case of unforeseen situations.