JUL 01. 2022 Thales is partnering with the Perlan Project to bring Artificial Intelligence capabilities to upstream flight planning, enabling the Project’s Airbus Perlan Mission II stratospheric glider to ascend to record-breaking heights in flights scheduled for July 2023.
The Perlan Project is a non-profit, international team of scientists, engineers, and aviators whose mission is to conduct climate, atmospheric and aeronautical research at extreme high altitudes. Applications of their research include informing more accurate climate-change models, understanding how atmospheric waves impact climate and how this untapped energy can be used to support low-energy or zero-emission aviation, and even demonstrating the feasibility of using energy-efficient winged aircraft on Mars.
The Project has already set world altitude records in the experimental Perlan 2 glider, which was designed, built and deployed to fly to 90,000 feet without an engine. In order to minimize the time (and therefore maximize the use of available oxygen and battery capacity) required to reach such an altitude, Artificial Intelligence delivered by Thales systems will be fed into the route plan to be delivered before the craft is towed then released at 30,000 feet.
