Fish in the sky
An unmanned hydrogen fuel cell powered jet made history this month as it took to the skies over the hills of Bern, Switzerland.
The HyFish, as the German UAV is called, performed vertical climbs, loops and other aerial acrobatics at speeds reaching 200 km/h.
These first flights were the result of a cooperative development effort between the German Air & Space Center (DLR, or Deutsches Zentrum fuer Luft-und Raumfahrt) and a number of international partners, including Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies of Singapore, which provided the fuel cell that powered the flight of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV).
UAVs are one of the most demanding applications for emerging hydrogen fuel cell power technologies due to the constraints of size, weight and aerodynamics. Scientists at Stuttgart DLR Institute for Technical Thermodynamics integrated the Horizon fuel cell system into the aircraft, which boasts a total weight of just 6 kg, a fuselage length of 1.2m and a short 1m wingspan.
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