AeroVironment Puma flies for nine hours powered by a fuel cell hybrid system
The AeroVironment Puma is a small unmanned aircraft with a wingspan of 2.6m and weight of 5.7kg. The Puma is hand-launched and is designed to provide aerial observation at line-of-sight ranges up to 10 kilometers.
On 06 Mar 08 AeroVironment announced that it has flown a Puma powered by an on-board fuel cell battery hybrid energy storage system for over nine hours. This broke the previous Puma flight record of over seven hours. A two-camera payload system provided a live, streaming video feed from the Puma. The nine-hour flight duration more than triples the duration of Puma’s standard battery-only operation.
The hybrid energy storage system use Protonex Technology Corporation’s Pulse™ unmanned aerial vehicle fuel cell system.
Source: AeroVironment
Filed under: Alternative fuel, Aviation, Hydrogen | Tagged: AeroVironment, fuel cell, Protonex Technology Corporation, Puma
