Airbus Zephyr

The Zephyr is a series of uncrewed high-altitude platform station aircraft powered by solar cells, which recharge batteries by day so that the aircraft can stay aloft through the night. QinetiQ, a commercial offshoot of the UK Ministry of Defence, originally designed it, and the project was sold to EADS Astrium, now Airbus Defence and Space, in March 2013. The Zephyr 7 set a world duration record of 14 days in July 2010, and in the summer of 2022 a Zephyr 8/S stayed up for 64 days. The current 8/S weighs about 60 kg and spans 25 metres, and the aircraft is intended for mobile phone coverage, environmental monitoring, military reconnaissance and communications relay.