Skip to footer

Why Facebook calls Aquila drone test flight a success – despite crashing

Facebook's Aquila drone – one of the enormous drones with which the company plans to connect to the world – had a successful test flight before experiencing 'structural failure.'

|
Stephen Lam/Reuters/File
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg holds a propeller pod of the solar-powered Aquila drone on stage during a keynote at the Facebook F8 conference in San Francisco, California on April 12, 2016.

An experimental Facebook drone is now the subject of a federal safety investigation after a structural failure caused it to crash.

But Facebook isn’t letting that hiccup define the project as a failure.

The drone, which is named Aquila and has the wingspan of a Boeing 737, experienced a “structural failure” while approaching Yuma, Ariz. during a test flight last summer, a spokesman for the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board told The Wall Street Journal. No one was injured.

The drone is part of Facebook’s Internet.org initiative, which aims to bring wireless connections to areas around the globe that lack sufficient internet service. While the crash resulted in structural damage to the drone, the company says the test flight was a success, leading them to extend the duration from around 30 minutes to 90.

“We were happy with the successful first test flight and were able to verify several performance models and components including aerodynamics, batteries, control systems and crew training, with no major unexpected results,” a spokesperson for Facebook told Bloomberg in a statement.

The crash isn’t the only roadblock Facebook has hit with its free internet initiative. In September, the company sought to launch a satellite into space that would bring internet access to various parts of Africa, but an unexpected explosion destroyed the equipment. The company has also seen pushback from India, which rejected the company’s offer for free internet services that would have centered around Facebook.

Still, the project may have found favor in Indonesia, and officials have asked if the Aquila drone could be used to beam service to parts of the nation.

"If we make the right investments now, we can connect billions of people in the next decade and lead the way for our generation to do great things," Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru on Saturday.

The NTSB is continuing to investigate the drone crash and plans to release a full report within the next few months. The company has designed the drone to use solar energy and battery power to fly for months at a time, allowing it to deliver data 10 times faster than current models.

If the drone continues to see success, Facebook plans to build an entire fleet of similar models to deliver internet to more than 1.6 billion people in rural areas.  “We gathered lots of data about our models and the aircraft structure – and after two years of development, it was emotional to see Aquila actually get off the ground,” Mr. Zuckerberg said in post after the flight.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Why Facebook calls Aquila drone test flight a success – despite crashing
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2016/1122/Why-Facebook-calls-Aquila-drone-test-flight-a-success-despite-crashing
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe