Solar drone with jumbo jet wingspan broke a flight record—then it crashed
The Skydweller drone was last visible on flight tracking service Flight Radar 24 north of Cancun, Mexico, in the early morning hours of May 4. The company described the drone as ultimately making a “controlled water landing” around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time, but the aircraft “subsequently sank due to its non-floating composite structure.”
At the time of its bankruptcy, the Skydweller drone had completed a record flight of eight days and 14 minutes on solar power, longer than any previous flight as a drone or crewed aircraft. The Skydweller Aero company commemorated it as an “operational prototype” that had “validated the practical military utility of a persistent medium-altitude solar aircraft” despite loss at sea.
Skydweller drone flights in July 2025.
The aircraft’s previous achievements will certainly remain etched in the public imagination. Solar Impulse 2 became the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe after completing a series of flights between 2015 and 2016. Along the way, it set a world record for the longest flight in a solar-powered aircraft when André Borschberg flew the plane for 117 hours and 52 minutes, or nearly five days, during a 5,545-mile (8,924-kilometer) journey between Nagoya, Japan and Hawaii.
Now the crash of the Skydweller drone means that the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne will not be able to display the historic aircraft according to an initial agreement with Skydweller Aero, according to SWI Swissinfo. This represents a major blow to aviation enthusiasts unless future rescue operations can be carried out.
This pioneering design could nevertheless inspire future solar-powered aircraft, intended for civil or military use. Skydweller Aero told Ars that it does not have any other prototypes immediately ready to replace the lost drone, but the company’s blog described “planned upgrades using existing technology” that could make future solar-powered drones better withstand extreme weather conditions. At the same time, the Pentagon has proposed investing at least $54 billion in drone warfare systems.
