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Luminati Aerospace (Calverton, NY, US) announced in August it has conducted a ground-breaking in-flight experiment that proves it can achieve perpetual stratospheric solar flight by means of fully automated vortex seeking formation flight.

The company claims it uses three aircraft in vortex formation flight to fly perpetually at the equator and can extend this all the way to 50° latitude with four aircraft in a diamond formation. The vortex formation enables perpetual flight by allowing aircraft in the formation to utilize energy created by the lead aircraft to conserve their own energy and by rotating the lead aircraft, resulting in a overall reduction in the amount of power used.

Data generated by the experiment with two aircraft and multiple data logging devices closely matched the results of high fidelity, autopilot hardware-in-the-loop, computer simulations that show that Luminati can fly perpetually all the way to 50° latitude.

Luminati used artificial intelligence and self-learning to overcome the limitations of current battery technology. The company’s goal of perpetual flight would allow them use UAVs to enable internet access to the 4 billion people in the world who presently have no access at all and has applications that will greatly enhance our national security.

Luminati next plans on building larger aircraft with the capability of carrying heavy commercial communications and ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) payloads.