BEAM POWERS MODEL PLANE IN NASA TEST.Byline: Daily News EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE Edwards Air Force Base, U.S. military installation, 301,000 acres (121,805 hectares), S Calif., NE of Lancaster; est. 1933. It is one of the largest air force bases in the United States and has the world's longest runway. - NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. has built and flown a remote-controlled model plane powered from the ground by the beam of an invisible laser. In indoor flights conducted last month at a NASA center in Alabama, the plane with a 5-foot wingspan flew with the laser beam energizing energizing, adj giving energy to; revitalizing; rejuvenating. photovoltaic cells to power a tiny electric motor that turned its lone propeller. ``The craft could keep flying as long as the energy source, in this case the laser beam, is uninterrupted,'' said Robert Burdine, laser project manager for the tests at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Marshall Space Flight Center The George C. Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC), the original home of NASA, is a lead center for propulsion, Space Shuttle propulsion, Shuttle external fuel tank, crew training and payloads, International Space Station (ISS) design and construction, for computers, networks, and . In flights last year at Dryden Flight Research Center The Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC), located inside Edwards Air Force Base, is an aeronautical research center operated by NASA. On March 26, 1976 it was named in honor of the late Hugh L. at Edwards Air Force Base, engineers manually traced the path flown by the plane with a theatrical spotlight, which provided the power needed to turn its propeller. Without the need for onboard fuel or batteries, a full-size plane running off photovoltaic cells powered by a laser beamed from the ground could carry scientific or communication equipment, for instance, and stay in flight indefinitely. NASA has tested full-size solar-powered planes, but the crafts aren't able to operate at night. An unmanned flying wing carrying auxiliary fuel cells for flying in the dark crashed during a checkout flight last June in Hawaii. Full-size planes able to stay aloft indefinitely could be used to monitor the environment, including erupting e·rupt v. e·rupt·ed, e·rupt·ing, e·rupts v.intr. 1. To emerge violently from restraint or limits; explode: My neighbor erupted in anger over the noise. 2. volcanoes. The planes also could be used for surveillance or to provide communications links. ``A telecommunications company See telecom company. could put transponders on an airplane and fly it over a city,'' said David Bushman, project manager for beamed power at Dryden, where the plane was designed and built. ``The aircraft could be used for everything from relaying cell phone calls to cable television or Internet connections.'' NASA's plane weighs only 11 ounces, constructed from balsa and carbon-fiber tubing covered with Mylar film. A special panel of photovoltaic cells, selected and tested by team participants at the University of Alabama The University of Alabama (also known as Alabama, UA or colloquially as 'Bama) is a public coeducational university located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, USA. Founded in 1831, UA is the flagship campus of the University of Alabama System. in Huntsville, converts the energy from the laser into electricity. The plane is not the first to use laser power. A team of Japanese researchers announced last year they successfully flew a paper airplane on bursts of laser light. That team's approach differed, however, because the blasts of laser heated drops of water on the plane's 1-inch wings, turning the liquid to puffs of vapor that pushed the aircraft forward. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) The model plane makes its first flight at a NASA site in Alabama last month as a laser beam from the ground powers its photovoltaic cells. NASA |
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