Facebook’s Drone Test Flight Finished With Part Of The Arm Breaking Off
The introductory flight of Facebook’s drone Aquila was successful in the 90-minute test. The dolly which is operated by remote produced adequate speed while it was holding the Aquila which helped in introducing Facebook’s drone, Aquila. The test was held in Yuma Proving Ground in southwestern Arizona in which the drone takes off at the altitude of 2,150 feet.
The status was good in the air but when the time came for landing Aquila all of a sudden a vigorous squall of the wind appeared and caused damage to the software. As a result, a 20-foot section of Aquila’s arm cut off as it came to the land.
According to the recent report by the National Transportation Safety Board said that “this is an exceptional incident, it happened because the drone was flying at a great speed, the Aquila is very week to slow it and as it landed the squall of wind banged the arm”.
Facebook also gave his statement about the incident. They said “they were not expecting that the plane will be damaged in this manner but they were aware of the mistake in the designing of the drone. They thought that the result will be minor damage to drone’s skids as it lands. There was a major defect in the Aquila’s autopilot software which is now been solved”.
In an interview of facebook and NTSB, the members of the facebook said that Aquila is a key player of internet.org and its main objective is to develop a great altitude, solar-powered aircraft which can provide internet opening to hundreds of millions of people in this world but they are having difficulty in major engineering and constructing test.
The first test flight of Aquila started at 6 AM on June 28th. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was also present there but they failed in this experiment. Later, facebook has decided to keep the drone for 30 minutes in the air but the engineers said that if they will keep the drone for a longer period then they can get more information of the drone.
Before five seconds of the landing, Aquila was struck by a squall of the wind which was up to 12 and 18 knots but Aquila can survive in up to 7 knots. Aquila was flying in more than 25 mph speed but it is intended to fly at that speed. When it was about to land and was only 20 feet above the land because of the speed and situation the right arm distorted and then crack off.
In an interview with The Verge, Facebook said that this incident happened because the NTSB does not allow them to reveal the situation while an experiment is underway. They also said that they will do two convenient modifications to the upcoming versions of Aquila. Facebook will launch their next Aquila version soon. They have not confirmed the actual date and time yet.
