Aquila, first of Facebook’s drone fleet has returned to base after a successful flight! The giant solar-powered drone’s return brings Facebook one step closer to realising its dream of providing internet to the whole world. The test flight took place in Yuma, Arizona.

The announcement of the same was made by the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, who wrote in a post,“On June 28th, we completed the first successful flight of Aquila – our solar-powered plane that will beam internet to remote parts of the world and eventually break the record for longest unmanned aircraft flight.”

According to the social network’s plan, the drone with a wingspan of an airliner will be a part of a huge fleet of drones that will fly at a height of 60,000 for months at a time.

“It’s all part of our mission to connect the world and help more of the 4 billion people who are not online access all the opportunities of the internet,” explained Zuckerberg.

However, the project is a lengthy one, as the current drone that took nearly two months to create just managed to stay off the ground for just about 96 minutes, which is quite less than the expected time. So, it is clearly not ready for a full-scale operation and according to Zuckerberg, they need to make it much lighter in order to make last longer in the air, as it currently weighs around 1000 pounds.

Apart from the weight issue, the platform will also be working on adjusting its power and a communications payload, which will use lasers to transfer data 10 times faster than existing systems.

“Over the next year we’re going to keep testing Aquila-flying higher and longer, and adding more planes and payloads,” Zuckerberg added.

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