An accident involving Facebook’s internet-serving drone is being investigated by United States aviation safety agency the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
The incident was previously described as a “structural failure” by Facebook and occurred during the “Aquila” drone’s first test flight on June 28. Alongside the recent loss of Facebook’s Amos-6 satellite in a SpaceX rocket explosion, the investigation marks another setback to the company’s global connectivity plans.
The massive Aquila drone, which boasts a wingspan comparable to a commercial airliner’s, undertook “substantial” damage during the accident, a spokesperson for the NTSB told Bloomberg. No damage occurred on the ground, claims the agency. Facebook itself has not officially confirmed the investigation.
The revelation comes as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg concludes his trip to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Peru, where he has been speaking to world leaders about his company’s connectivity plans. “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,” said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post.
Last month, the company’s head of aeronautical platforms Martin Gomez revealed that a number of countries were interested in hosting test flights for the Aquila drone. The latest nation to express interest in Facebook’s Internet.org connectivity program is Indonesia, reports local newspaper the Jakarta Post.
Facebook previously claimed its inaugural test flight ended up lasting more than 90 minutes — almost three times longer than its expected duration. Despite being tested with a battery-powered system, Aquila drones are expected to eventually make the switch to solar.
The company said the following in a blog post in July: “Once they are fully operational, these high-altitude planes will stay airborne for up to 90 days at a time and beam broadband coverage to a 60-mile-wide area on the ground, helping to open the opportunities of the internet to people in underconnected regions.”
Comets probably weren’t reliable couriers for the ingredients that helped life begin on Earth. A new Cambridge-led study found that fragile organic molecules would usually have been destroyed when the comets carrying them struck the surface.
Published in Scientific Reports, the research tracked hydrogen cyanide, a molecule involved in chemistry that can precede life. Rare successful deliveries remain possible, but the simulations offered little support for a steady supply from comets.
San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.
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Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.
The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.