Boeing’s SolarEagle is planned as an unmanned, solar-powered aircraft designed to stay aloft for five years. Photo Credit - Courtesy of Boeing
New Mexico State University has landed a multimillion-dollar contract to help develop and test a radically new unmanned aircraft designed to stay aloft for five years.
The aircraft is planned to carry a 1,000-pound payload, produce 5 kilowatts of onboard power and withstand the buffeting winds encountered 60,000 to 90,000 feet above the Earth.
The Vulture II project was conceived by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Department of Defense branch responsible for developing new technologies for use by the military.
T. “Bear” Larson, the DARPA program’s test director, said the initial four-year contract is worth about $2.5 million, but will likely grow to about $5.5 million with construction of a specialized hangar — capable of housing the planned aircraft’s 400-foot wingspan — and a 3,000-foot-wide circular launch field.
A combination of solar cells and solid oxide fuel cells will power the vehicle.
The hangar and launch-landing field will be built at NMSU’s Jornada Experimental Range, about 15 miles northeast of Las Cruces.
The project is headquartered at NMSU’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Test Center.
Plans call for flight testing the aircraft in 2014.
“We will be involved primarily in the airworthiness assessment and then the conduct of the flight tests,” Doug Davis, deputy director of technical analysis and application at NMSU’s Physical Science Laboratory, said Friday from Las Cruces.
Boeing designed the SolarEagle aircraft selected by DARPA for the Vulture II program. Boeing will manufacture the aircraft in modules, then ship it for final assembly at the Jornada hangar, Davis said.
NMSU President Barbara Couture said the contract is a perfect match for the university.
“We have the only unmanned aerial vehicle facility in the nation that could house a project like this, and we have a great aeronautical engineering program,” she said.
Though UAV missions typically involve intelligence gathering, surveillance, reconnaissance and communications, they are increasingly being used as weapons platforms. On Friday, Las Cruces-born Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awaki, one of the United States’ most wanted al-Qaida leaders, was killed by a Hellfire missile fired from an unmanned CIA drone in northern Yemen.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal
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