Engineering Education “Today in History” Blog: Longest solar-powered uninhabited flight
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (877) · July 31st, 2012 · Add a Comment
Today in History – July 31, 2008 – To date, QinetiQ breaks unofficial world record for uninhabited flight over three and a half days US Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The record is “unofficial” as QinetiQ conducted the research under a military contract to perform a military utility assessment of a US Government communications payload. The uninhabited Aerial Vehicle (UAV), called the Zephyr, is an ultra-lightweight carbon-fiber aircraft (wing shown below). It is initially launched by hand, then flies by day on solar power generated by amorphous silicon solar arrays no thicker than sheets of paper that cover the aircraft’s wings. Excess energy is stored in rechargeable lithium-sulphur batteries for use at night. The flight trial at Yuma took place between 28 and 31 July. It was flown on autopilot and via satellite communications to a maximum altitude of more than 60,000ft.
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Well it was a world record, when this blog was first written. Like many records, it asks to be broken. This month the Zephyr drone, the latest from QinetiQ, set the endurance record for an uninhabited solar-powered plane by remaining aloft for seven straight days, flying day and night. It reached this record on July 17, 2010 after took off from the U.S. Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona on July 9, 2010. The Zephyr weighs 117 pounds, has a wingspan of 74 feet and a wing area of about 323 square feet.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on unmanned flight. Or view curricular resources at the Aerospace Engineering Education Community site.
Also on this date in 1790, the first U.S. patent was issued. The Engineering Pathway has a number of educational resources on patents and inventors.
Tags: Aerospace Engineering · Engineering Mechanics · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Mechanical Engineering
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