SOLAR-POWERED PLANE TESTS MAY CONTINUE DESPITE CRASH, BUILDER SAYS.Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer 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. - The manufacturer of the solar-powered flying wing that crashed during a NASA NASA: see National Aeronautics and Space Administration. NASA in full National Aeronautics and Space Administration Independent U.S. checkout flight off Hawaii says it hopes to use a similar but smaller craft to continue tests this summer. Helios Prototype, a remotely controlled craft that cruises at only 25 mph, broke into two sections roughly at its 247-foot wing's midpoint mid·point n. 1. Mathematics The point of a line segment or curvilinear arc that divides it into two parts of the same length. 2. A position midway between two extremes. while at about 8,000 feet less than 30 minutes into a shakedown flight Thursday off Kauai, officials said Friday. ``It was doing a very basic procedure during the first part of the flight, climbing into the stratosphere,'' said Stuart Hindle of AeroVironment, the plane's Monrovia-based manufacturer. On Friday, NASA appointed a five-member board of experts from NASA research centers and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Noun 1. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - an agency in the Department of Commerce that maps the oceans and conserves their living resources; predicts changes to the earth's environment; provides weather reports and forecasts floods and hurricanes and to determine the cause of the accident. The board includes NASA 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. aerospace engineer and former research pilot Stephen Ishmael. While the board conducts its investigation, NASA Dryden spokesman Alan Brown
AeroVironment on Friday released a statement saying it was likely test missions would continue with Pathfinder-Plus, the solar-powered predecessor of Helios Prototype. With a 121-foot wingspan, Pathfinder-Plus set an altitude record of 80,000 feet in 1998 and last summer performed telecommunications and crop monitoring missions. Besides flying for NASA, Helios was also due to carry aloft high-speed Internet See broadband. communication gear in a test for the Japanese government. Helios was testing a fuel-cell system for staying aloft for days, part of a NASA effort to develop unmanned aircraft capable of flying for weeks or even months. Helios set a world altitude record for winged aircraft in 2001 of 96,863 feet. CAPTION(S): photo Photo: (color) The Helios Prototype broke into two sections and crashed. |
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