These Tiny Aircraft Are Powered Entirely by the Sun’s Heat
1 min read
Summary
A team at Harvard University in the US has developed tiny, lightweight flyers that could one day be used to explore swarms and carry out analyses at relatively low cost in the mesosphere, an area 50km to 80km above the Earth that is difficult to study with conventional methods.
The flyers, each smaller than a dime, are made of two layers of perforated aluminium oxide 1,000 times thinner than a human hair.
The mesosphere is an area of study as it is highly sensitive to carbon dioxide, temperature and water vapour and could yield valuable insights into climate change.
The flyers could also be used to analyse the atmosphere of Mars.
