ISAE-SUPAERO and H3 Dynamics Develop a Zero-emission Pilotless Aircraft to Cross the Atlantic Ocean
23.11.2020 14:00:00 EET | Business Wire | Press release
ISAE-SUPAERO:
Extracting energy for ultra-long range flights
Since the pioneering work of Lord Rayleigh in 1883, it has been observed that some birds such as Albatrosses can achieve outstanding flight durations and ranges by using wind gradients over flat surfaces. More recently, two Ph.D. programs conducted at ISAE-SUPAERO have provided new insights into the physical mechanism which consists of extracting energy from wind gradients with the objective of transferring the strategy onto fixed-wing drones. A potential range gain of 40% for a given drone has been identified and this can be achieved by applying the flight strategies inspired from Albatrosses and other natural flyers.
The ambition of the ‘Drone Mermoz’ project is to combine different sources of energy in order to achieve a long-range flight with a 100% electrically powered drone. The challenge will consist of following the historical route taken by Jean Mermoz in 1930 between Dakar (Senegal) and Natal (Brazil). The total distance is about 3000 kilometers which proves impossible with a conventional battery-based electric drone.
The key technology to achieving such a long-range flight is based on fuel cells supplied by H3 Dynamics. Because fuel cells produce electricity from Hydrogen and only reject water into the atmosphere, Drone Mermoz will be a collaborative effort between H3 Dynamics and ISAE-SUPAERO to design, manufacture and fly the first 100% green drone to achieve such long distances. Using the best aircraft design strategies available, ISAE-SUPAERO will endeavour to design an optimized drone with a total mass of less than 25 kg to make an attempt at the record in 2021.
ISAE-SUPAERO’s commitment towards sustainable development
The ‘Drone Mermoz’ initiative is in line with ISAE-SUPAERO’s investment in innovative aeronautical and space technologies in a sustainable development perspective.
ISAE-SUPAERO is well aware of the environmental issues such as climate change and energy transition. It has embarked on a mission to raise awareness and the direction of research at ISAE-SUPAERO puts in place environment-conscious research programs thanks to technological innovations and eco-design of cleaner aircrafts.
To view this piece of content from cts.businesswire.com, please give your consent at the top of this page.
View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20201123005792/en/
Contact information
Leïla Colaud
leila.c@oxygen-rp.com
About Business Wire
For more than 50 years, Business Wire has been the global leader in press release distribution and regulatory disclosure.
Subscribe to releases from Business Wire
Subscribe to all the latest releases from Business Wire by registering your e-mail address below. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Latest releases from Business Wire
Octane AI Launches Phoenix, an AI Quiz Builder That Builds, Checks and Improves Quizzes for Shopify Brands21.10.2026 20:15:00 EEST | Press release
Octane AI, the quiz and zero-party data platform for Shopify brands, launched Phoenix in October, its biggest release to date. Merchants describe the quiz they want or upload what they already have, and Phoenix builds it, checks it, personalizes the results and keeps improving it with experiments. One beta customer turned a single document into a complete product-launch quiz: “I attached it to Phoenix, and it built the whole thing, all the pages. It understood everything, not just the text but the logic behind it.” Across all live Octane AI quizzes, 15% of shoppers who finish a quiz place an order. Yet building one has meant hours of writing rules by hand, custom code for design and clicking through every path to find broken results. Phoenix handles those hard parts, from building a quiz to improving it after launch. “Since day one, we've kept track of every piece of feedback from our merchants: what frustrates them and what they wish Octane AI could do. Phoenix is the result, and it k
Cognite Earns Corporate Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon Petroleum Corporation21.10.2026 20:06:00 EEST | Press release
Cognite today announced it has been named Corporate Supplier of the Year winner in Marathon Petroleum Corporation’s 11th Annual Supplier Recognition Awards. The Supplier Recognition Awards is a program sponsored by Marathon Petroleum Corporation to honor suppliers that positively impacted the company’s business throughout the previous calendar year. “There’s a reason ‘Impact’ is one of Cognite’s most important core values,” said Girish Rishi, CEO of Cognite. “For us, the ultimate measure of our performance is delivering quantifiable value for our customers. From that perspective, the Corporate Supplier of the Year award from Marathon is particularly meaningful. Marathon Petroleum is an innovator, and to receive this recognition is a great honor to the Cognite community.” The Supplier of the Year Award from Marathon is the latest honor Cognite has received in 2026: In May, Cognite ranked 15th on CNBC’s Disruptor50 list, honoring venture-backed companies innovating across industries, exp
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. to Webcast Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion Presentations on November 4, 202621.10.2026 19:48:00 EEST | Press release
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL) today announced that it will webcast presentations from its Capital Markets Experience: China Ecosystem Immersion in Shanghai, China, on Wednesday, November 4, 2026. The event will feature presentations from Stéphane de La Faverie, President and Chief Executive Officer, and Akhil Shrivastava, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer, as well as members of the Company’s Executive Leadership Team and local leaders. The presentations will highlight the Company’s strategy and capabilities in China, Beauty Reimagined in action, and how China serves as a blueprint for deploying the Company’s global capabilities to drive sustainable growth and stronger profitability. Due to limited capacity, in-person attendance is by invitation only. Interested parties can access the live webcast on Wednesday, November 4th, beginning at 1:00 p.m. China Standard Time (12:00 a.m. ET) at Investors – The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. A replay of the webcast wi
Future Health and Bridge for Billions to Launch Programme Strengthening Health Entrepreneurship in Emerging Markets21.10.2026 18:50:00 EEST | Press release
Future Health – A Global Initiative by Abu Dhabi and Bridge for Billions will launch a new entrepreneurship programme designed to strengthen promising health ventures in emerging markets and help locally-developed solutions reach more people. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20261021719421/en/ The first phase of the programme will target around 50 entrepreneurs leading late-incubation to early-acceleration ventures in Africa and Asia. Emerging markets are home to significant health needs and entrepreneurial potential, yet many promising ventures can struggle to access the capital, specialist guidance, and health-system connections required to grow. WIPO’s Global Innovation Index 2024 reported that Latin America and Africa together accounted for around 3% of global venture-capital deals in the first half of 2024, while venture-capital values fell by 19% in Asia-Pacific and 80% in Africa. At the same time, entrepre
Hephaestus Exits Stealth Having Raised $17.2M to Supply Rare-Earth-Free HTS Superconductors and Build Low-Cost Fusion Power21.10.2026 17:48:00 EEST | Press release
Hephaestus today emerged from stealth with solutions that address two of the largest cost drivers in fusion power: the high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets that confine the plasma, and the edge-localized modes (ELMs – major plasma instabilities) that drive up the cost and complexity of conventional reactor designs. The company also announced the close of a new funding round led by CiRi Ventures. Hephaestus was founded in London in 2019 with a single mission – to help make fusion energy cheap enough to compete on the grid. Its AI plasma solver initially swept the full space of tokamak design parameters, unconstrained by the legacy designs and materials much of the industry is already committed to, and identified negative triangularity (NT), which inverts the D-shaped plasma used in most tokamaks, as the most likely configuration for low-cost fusion energy. Subsequent results from facilities worldwide, including the DIII-D, JET, and SMART, have shown that NT can deliver strong
In our pressroom you can read all our latest releases, find our press contacts, images, documents and other relevant information about us.
Visit our pressroom