HAPS – Made in India UAV that can fly 20km high and float for months
The High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS) c81an fly at Altitude of 20km, almost double the height gain by commercial airplanes.
HAPS is still a developing technology ,which undergone successful test flight last week.Its ability to generate solar power, can remain in air for months or even years .
Tha National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru has successfully completed the first test of a solar-powered “pseudo satellite”, a new age unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can significantly increase India’s surveillance and monitoring capabilities in the border areas.
It does not required rocket to get into space,that’s why the cost of operating HAPS is several times lower than a satellite being launched 200km above the earth surface.
The Test flight, carried out in the Challakere testing range in Chitradurga district of Karnataka, saw the scaled-down 23-kg prototype with a wing-span of about 12 metres, remain in air for about eight and a half hours, achieving an altitude of about 3 km from the ground.
This is a very important milestone in the development of HAPS. But there are a few more milestones to be attained before HAPS is ready for industrial production. The next step, and we hope to do it next month itself, is to make this vehicle fly for at least 24 hours, during which the entire sequence of power generation, involving the solar cells and batteries that would be charged during the day and consumed during the night, can be tested. We are working towards a deployment target by 2027,” Abhay Anant Pashilkar, director of NAL, one of the laboratories under the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) replied to a question asked by media person.