After investigating into the Facebook's drone crash, a U.S. government report concluded that the cause of the incident was the fact that a wing on the internet-beaming aircraft broke when its autopilot tried to maintain its angle of descent.
Facebook's Drone Crash
According to CNET, Aquila, Facebook's internet-beaming drone prototype, was involved in a crash because of an inability to handle the wind, as concluded by a federal investigation. Now, the social media company is working on changing the aircraft design accordingly.
Facebook's Aquila drone, unmanned and operated by autopilot technology, was involved in a crash during its first test flight in Yuma, Arizona, on June 28. At the moment of the crash, the drone was preparing to land at the very end of its flight. The unmanned aircraft was damaged pretty badly but, fortunately, no one was injured, according to a report released Friday, Dec. 16, by the National Transportation Safety Board report.
The drone had difficulties in maintaining its proper angle of descent due to a stronger-than-expected wind. Its autopilot tried to compensate for the wind by pointing the nose of the aircraft down, according to the NTSB report. In order to do so, the drone lifted up flaps on the trailing edge of its wing (elevons).
This maneuver led to too much pressure and twisting for the unmanned aircraft. Another problem uncovered by the crash is that the Aquila drone could not slow itself down enough through aerodynamic drag.
Facebook's blog post explained that the autopilot technology was not able to track both the glide path and airspeed at the same time, giving too much priority to airspeed. The company concluded that future designs will need to incorporate a mechanism to increase drag so the Aquila drone can descend at a moderate speed.
Lessons Learned
Facebook announced that it's already designing and building second-generation aircraft. As result of the testing and learning, new features are being added. The company is eager to fly its drones again.
According to Tech Crunch, Facebook is not a hardware company and the drone technology is a new field of exploration for the social media company. Despite its vast resources, before it can expect everything to work perfectly, the tech company will have to go through trials and errors.
With each successive test flight, Facebook is facing both expected and unexpected technical challenges. However, the testing will teach Facebook engineers more about how to fly their experimental aircraft.
Despite the crash, Facebook still called the flight an overall success. The company is keen to find new ways to facilitate access to the internet for people in remote areas.
Designed to circle overhead for 60 to 90 days at a time and powered by solar energy, the Aquila drone is part of Facebook's effort to increase broadband coverage to remote areas without using the traditional internet infrastructure.
The Aquila crash was not the only setback to Facebook's plans. A satellite designed to bring internet access to parts of Africa was destroyed in September when the SpaceX Falcon 9 carrier rocket exploded at Cape Canaveral, Florida.
