Airbus Statospheric Glider Headed to Andes

One of the stars of last year’s EAA AirVenture show will not making a return visit for 2016. Instead, the stratospheric Airbus Perlan Mission II pressurized glider is currently at sea, on a container ship headed for its next round of testing in El Calafate, Argentina. It left Minden, Nev., earlier this month “after a successful flight-test program,” according to the company, and will explore mountain waves in Patagonia as the next chapter in its development.

For a brief period in August and September, the weather in the Andes mountains is conducive to generating the waves that could lift the glider to its desired altitudes of up to 90,000 feet. Though this summer’s trip will focus on lower levels, it could still break the world record for sailplane altitude, 50,671 feet, set by its predecessor, the unpressurized Perlan 1.

The ultimate purpose of the project is to use unpowered aircraft to collect uncontaminated atmospheric data at upper levels of the stratosphere to bring new understanding of weather patterns and “new insights into climate change,” said Airbus. Ultimately, the Perlan 2 will carry experiments from Earth scientists around the world, and from school and university classrooms. Airbus also expects to collect valuable data on high-altitude flight.