It was indeed a facinating plane but I always thought it was of a very flimsy/weak design. Just my opinion though.

regards
seekerof

however with that design it was only a matter of time. i can't even find the cockpit

It was a robot..

This is like hearing about the death of R2-D2..

well, not really. Still, the craft proved that solar power COULD move a vehicle for months on end, and may have opened the door for a whole new breed of recon aircraft...

man that is very interesting. i didn't know they could do that

That ScanEalge is indeed another new UAV project (wonder if all those UAV projects are really worth it )
But you can't really compare is to the helios, since the ScanEagle is not solar-powered...

Yes it was an incredible aircraft

Just look at the thing, it was never designed to land! They say it was meant to fly continuasly, they might have needed to fix it or bring it down for data purposes. I didn't read the article like a should have, but thats just the first impression I got from your post.

They already did some test flights, and it is able to land.
The problem is, the airframe is very fragile(spell??).. It's even more difficult to land than a U-2 spy plane...
It can only operate at minimum winds speeds, a sudden increase in windspeed probably caused the crash, since it was flying over the ocean near Hawaii...

Have you gotten your hands on any video footage of this thing? Just wondering since I have never seen it fly. Does it only soar around the west coast?