Space Conquest.

Two Days Aloft: 'Vanilla' Drone Breaks Endurance Record

By Kacey Deamer, Staff Writer | January 13, 2017

The Vanilla Aircraft flew for 56 hours, setting a new world record for flight duration in its weight class.

A 56-hour, nonstop, unrefueled flight has set a new world record for endurance.

The VA001, a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or drone made by Vanilla Aircraft, stayed in the air for more than two days and two nights, setting the record for the craft's weight and power class. After taking off Nov. 30 from New Mexico State University’s Unmanned Air Systems Flight Test Center, the drone flew at an altitude of between 6,500 and 7,500 feet (1,980 to 2,286 meters) and averaged 65.6 mph (105 km/h) before landing on Dec. 2.

The drone project is backed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's research arm. Drones already play an important role in military efforts, with functions ranging from surveillance missions to equipment delivery, DARPA said. Vanilla's VA001 is designed to stay aloft for up to 10 days of nonstop flight, carrying a 30-lb. (14 kilograms) payload, DARPA said.

Vanilla's record-breaking flight was actually cut short by several days, due to incoming bad weather. When the drone landed, more than half of its fuel was still on board, according to DARPA officials. The agency said the VA001 could set more world records for drones in future flights.

"This record-breaking flight demonstrated the feasibility of designing a low-cost UAV able to take off from one side of a continent, fly to the other, perform its duties for a week and come back — all on the same tank of fuel," Jean-Charles Ledé, DARPA program manager, said in a statement.

Potential applications of the Vanilla aircrafts include UAV-based communications and intelligence gathering, Ledé said. UAVs not only allow for stealth, Ledé said they also reduce personnel and operating costs.

DARPA is working on several drone projects as the technology has continued to advance, the agency said. The "Gremlin" program aims to build swarms of small drones that can be deployed from manned aircrafts to gather intelligence. Another project focuses on the monitoring of small-drone activity in cities. This so-called "Aerial Dragnet" would help the continuous surveillance of drones.

The Falcon Has Landed

Now SpaceX is eyeing Mars.

By Eric Betz|Thursday, December 22, 2016

A Falcon 9 booster rocket successfully touches down after a launch in April.

Since the dawn of the Space Age, science fiction enthusiasts have fantasized about reusable rockets. Over the past year, Elon Musk and his company, SpaceX, made those visions a reality. Now, the tech mogul has his sights set on a bigger, redder prize.

SpaceX has tried four times in the past two years to land one of its Falcon 9 rockets at sea; each exploded. But in April, a Falcon 9 successfully touched down on a drone ship in the Atlantic — a first — after ferrying cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Months earlier, in December 2015, SpaceX pulled off its first land touchdown, at Cape Canaveral. The company was planning to relaunch one of those successfully landed Falcon 9s for the first time in late 2016 or early 2017.

Musk hopes reusable rockets will make colonizing Mars an affordable reality. In April, the space entrepreneur said he’ll send an unmanned spacecraft to Mars by 2018. And at the International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in September, he said he’d send more spacecraft every 26 months for the foreseeable future. “We want to establish a steady cadence so that there’s always a flight leaving, like a train leaving the station,” he told the IAC.

Before departing for the Red Planet, though, SpaceX must show that the monster next-gen rocket it needs to get there, the Falcon Heavy — essentially three Falcon 9s strapped together — can also launch, land and relaunch. At press time, the company, which would not comment on the subject, listed on its website an initial Falcon Heavy test launch at the end of 2016. Media reports suggested it might take longer.

And September brought a reality check. After eight successful 2016 flights, a Falcon 9 exploded during routine fueling at Cape Canaveral. On Twitter, Musk called it “the most difficult and complex failure we have ever had.” The explosion could delay SpaceX’s 2017 plans to ferry NASA astronauts to the ISS, which the space agency now expects won’t happen until 2018 — a deadline that’s already been postponed twice.

As if the vision of colonizing Mars wasn’t bold enough, Musk also revealed the Interplanetary Transport System at the September IAC, featuring a dramatically scaled-up Falcon 9 that dwarfs any rocket ever built. Musk says the rocket’s companion passenger ship could travel the entire solar system and enable a fully self-sustaining civilization (roughly 1 million people) on Mars possibly by 2060. Now, he’ll just have to solve the numerous other engineering and social challenges of such an endeavor — and find a way to pay for it.

“It would be an incredible adventure,” Musk told the audience at the IAC meeting. “And life needs to be more than just solving problems every day. You need to wake up and be excited about the future.”

Resume: My first article speaks about drones, written by Kacey Deamer, Staff Writter. The VA001, a small drone made by Vanilla Aircraft, stayed in the atmosphere for nearly two days and two nights, setting the record for the craft's weight and power class. After taking off on November 30 from New Mexico State University’s Unmanned Air Systems Flight Test Center, the drone flew at an altitude of approximatively 1,980 to 2,286 meters and a average pace of 105 km/h before landing on December 2.

My second article talks about space and rocket, written by Eric Betz. Today, the spacial technology reach a breakthrough in matters of drone. Now, the company SpaceX is able to touchdown a rocket from space. Tried four times in the past, in late 2016, Falcon 9, the rocket finally get back in place from its departure. The company hope it could colonize the planet Mars by 2018. It could lead to a new civilization because the earth suffers of its overpopulation and becoming a serious problem over the years.

Those two new achievement are taking us in a near future where space travel will be soon possible. A new vision of the space area is getting draw more and more precisely and we can only hope for the best concerning this project.