Facebook announced it is building a team of engineers to explore using unmanned aircraft, satellites and lasers to expand Internet access across the globe.
Facebook said March 27 that aerospace technology could be useful in places where more conventional means of communication, such as cell phone towers and fiber optic cables, are impractical. Solar-powered aircraft that fly at 65,000 feet and stay aloft for months at a time could beam Internet access to a city-sized area with a medium population density, while satellites in low-Earth or geosynchronous orbit could serve large tracts of land with low population densities. Lasers could boost the speed of Internet connections provided by both unmanned aircraft and satellites.
“The team’s approach is based on the principle that different sized communities need different solutions, and they are already working on new delivery platforms — including planes and satellites — to provide connectivity for communities with different population densities,” Facebook said.
The company said it is already building its first unmanned aircraft and “we expect to have an initial version of this system working in the near future.” It added that “communications satellites today are expensive to deploy, but space-based methods of connectivity are becoming smaller and cheaper to launch.”
The team, called the Connectivity Lab, is hiring engineers, as well as bringing in outside experts from such places as NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA’s Ames Research Center, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, and Ascenta, a British company that designs and builds high-altitude, long-endurance aircraft. The project is part of Internet.org, a larger effort by Facebook and others to make the Internet available to the two-thirds of the world’s population that does not have access.
Facebook’s announcement comes several months after online retailer Amazon revealed it is developing Prime Air, which will use small unmanned aircraft to deliver packages. The two firms join a growing number of non-aerospace companies that are embracing unmanned aviation.
“It’s exciting to see more and more companies, from retailers to technology giants like Facebook, continue to realize the potential of unmanned aircraft systems,” said Michael Toscano, president and CEO of the Association of Unmanned Vehicle Systems International.
