December 9, 2015 - The sponsors and volunteers behind Airbus Perlan Mission II, an initiative to soar an engineless glider to the edge of space, celebrated today the opening of the new Dennis Tito Perlan 2 Hangar at Minden/Tahoe Municipal Airport. The ceremony...
On Monday, December 7, 2015, Grafics Unlimited installers arrived to put the graphics on the Perlan 2 and the trailer that holds the Perlan 2 for travel. Installation went to well thanks to the help of the Minden-Tahoe Airport staff who arranged for the Perlan...
November 13, 2015 ATA has terabytes of data! The final day of testing went well, and the Perlan 2 headed for Minden, NV. The Perlan team also dropped by Gentex for measurement of Oxygen masks for the BioMarine re-breather system. [gallery size="large"...
Ground Vibration Tests at ATA in San Diego. Perlan team of Einar, Morgan, Doug, Jim and Jackie brought the Airbus Perlan 2 glider to ATA Engineering in San Diego for Ground Vibration Testing (GVT). This gentle shaking will determine structural frequencies and damping...
November 9, 2015 The Airbus Perlan Mission II has reached another major milestone, the Ground Vibration Test (GVT) of the Perlan 2 Glider. The testing is taking place this week at ATA Engineering, in San Diego, CA. Ground vibration testing is often performed on...
Gliding Convention in Germany Miguel Iturmendi made a presentation on the Perlan Project on Saturday, October 31, 2015, at the Gliding Convention that was held at the Convention Center in Freudenstadt, Germany. It was a fantastic event! Hundreds of people received...
January 11, 2016 Perlan CubeSat Contest: High Altitude Experiments with an Exciting Twist Teachers in Space has teamed up with Perlan to bring space science directly into the classroom. What’s cool for educators is that inside the Perlan 2 sailplane there is a payload...
The wing spar that was impossible to assemble has passed its ultimate test. This was a really important milestone, more important than the first flight. We knew it was going to fly and we had enough analysis and simulation done to know what it would be like to...
September 23, 2015 Press Conference and Reception following the First Flight of the Perlan 2. "The Perlan 2 glider, the world’s first engineless aircraft designed to reach the edge of space, achieved its successful first flight today in a historic moment about 5,000...
September 23, 2015 These beautiful photos of the first flight of Perlan 2 were taken by Jamie Darcy from Airbus from the chase helicopter.
After flying 4.6 hours on August 15, 2017 the Airbus Perlan Mission II team celebrated the new high mark of 33,200 feet or 10,000 meters! The first photo is from 30,000 feet looking east over Lago Argentina. The second photo is from 33,000 feet looking west towards...
Tim Gardner was able to take some goregous photos while flying above Patagonia. First - Lago Argentino on tow 7400 feet Second - Lake from 15,600 feet Third - Above Upsala and Spegazzini glaciers 28,000 feet Fourth - Looking at Andes from 33,000 feet Fifth - Looking...
On August 15, 2017 Airbus Perlan Mission II team gathered in the hangar for an early launch. The weather balloon team of Loris, Sandra, Stewart, Martin, Alec and Michael had collected wind, temperature, and altitude data to use to fine tune the forecast. Those hardy...
August 12, 2017 was our first balloon launch from Punta Bandera which is on the west end of the lake exactly 32 air miles upwind of El Calafate airport. Airbus Perlan Mission II just got permission to launch a weather balloon from Punta Bandera. It's a bit complicated...
While the weather does not support wave, Airbus Perlan Mission II team is using the opportunity to install some upgrades. We took the wings off to get better access to the interior of the fuselage. Morgan wanted more heat and insulation on our flutter exciters or...
Yesterday we had such dense fog that the noon time Aerolineas flight diverted from El Calafate. This morning we had hard ice on the car windshields. We got a dust of snow on the ridge to the south but heavier snow on higher hills to north. More water in the "dry" lake...