, a Romanian developer of space vehicles, has announced that it is developing a high performance Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The aircraft is named Air Strato and is part of a larger UAS family that will carry out various missions for ARCA and its partners.
Air Strato is a high altitude electrical powered unmanned aircraft system. The first prototype is completed and is already in testing. It is the largest variant with a wingspan of 16m (52 ft), intended for stratospheric flights up to an altitude of 18 km. The aircraft is electrically powered and has autonomy of 7 hours on internal batteries and 3 days using solar panels. It can carry a payload of 30 kg consisting of aerial photography and surveillance equipment, scientific instruments or other payloads for various tasks including additional battery pods for extended autonomy.
The other versions of Air Strato have a smaller wingspan and lower flight ceiling but higher maximum speed and larger payloads.
“Our activity requires that we perform stratospheric missions for our partners and clients, and solar and helium balloons we used until now, although capable of lifting heavier payloads to higher altitudes, are more expensive and time consuming in construction, are dependent on calm weather conditions and require aerial safety zones to be established” said Dumitru Popescu, ARCA’s CEO. “Air Strato can fill their roles much cheaper and reliable for an extended period of time and perform additional tasks for clients such as surveillance over a fixed area, telemetry testing and scientific experiments for extended period of time or other missions. It will make our entire aerospace activity much easier and less expensive.”
ARCA performed a series of tests on rough ground for the Air Strato electrical powered unmanned aircraft system. The aircraft was accelerated to take-off speed to verify if the landing gear is able to hold on this type of runway. We also determined the required take-off distance. Air Strato has a very low take-off speed of about 50 km/h and can use any type of runway, including concrete, grass landing strips, even improvised runways covered with mud. The powerful electrical motors propel it to take off speed in a very short distance of max. 65m. This makes the aircraft able to be operated in a variety of conditions and the low take-off and landing distance make it possible utilise any flat strip of land available.
“We started with low speeds passes and gradually increased until we reached take-off speed. The electrical engines, in spite of there sizes, are very powerful and we reached 0 to 50 km/h in only 65 m. On concrete, the take-off speed was reached in only 50m. We haven’t installed wheel brakes yet so it took a while to come to a stop after engine cut-off. The runway was improvised by clearing the snow and leveling the ground a bit, but we didn’t do much more. Overall we are impressed on how well the aircraft performed.” said Dumitru Popescu, ARCA president.
If tests are successful ARCA is considering developing commercial versions of Air Strato and other UAS in the family.
Source: ARCA