Facebook’s Aquila Drone test flight

The world’s largest social network, Facebook had completed its maiden full scale flight of its solar powered drone Aquila for 90 minutes over Arizona, designed to beam the internet down to remote areas of the world.

Jay Parikh, Facebook’s global head of engineering and infrastructure, said the company’s connectivity lab was working on projects from drone to satellites to get billion online quicker.

In the world there are still over 4bn people without basic internet, and their lives can be transformed with life-changing opportunities and experiences to all of us. Out of this 1.6bn people live in remote areas with no access to mobile broadband networks, where implementing existing network technologies are near impossible and not cost effective. Alphabet (Google) is also develoiping ways to beam internet from the sky using balloons with its Project Loon.

Aquila drone made in Somerset, English manufacturer Ascenta. The drone can fly up to three months consuming 5000 watts of energy at cruising speed. One drone will circle a region of a diameter of 60 miles beaming down internet via radio waves from 60,000 feet.