F8 A few more details on Eagle drone

With the goal of connecting the world as well as to extend the means of communication to anyone on the planet, Facebook began some time to experiment with alternatives to communication systems based on land, such as the futuristic drone called Aquila.

At F8, the Facebook developer conference dedicated to that took place in recent days in San Francisco, the vice president Jay Parikh has revealed few details in most of Aquila: "We need autonomy in flight in the order of magnitude of months, and then we have invented a new avioggetto for this purpose. the majority of avioggetti are not designed to fly for months and to project laser beams in the sky to bring the web in rural communities. "

The drone has the size of a passenger jet, but is nothing more than a wing: "We eliminated the tail, managing to reduce mass and aerodynamic drag, but this makes it more difficult the turns and then we had to do a lot of work for the steering devices. "

Being an unmanned aircraft, the Facebook engineers have fitted the cockpit and have implemented an automated flight control system. In addition to the fuel tanks they have been eliminated, since the drone is powered by solar energy. "We built of carbon fiber to make it lighter, and appealing to the eye."

Aquila will connect laser communication to an internet access point in an urbanized area and will relay the connection to rural areas. E 'will be a mode of operation for the extension of the network by connecting to other drones Aquila increasingly using laser beams.