New-Tech Magazine - Europe | January Digital edition

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Project Skybender: Google’s secretive 5G internet drone tests revealed

separate from the terminal. Based out of the site near the town called Truth or Consequences, Project SkyBender is using drones to experiment withmillimetre- wave radio transmissions, one of the technologies that could underpin next generation 5Gwireless internet access. High frequency millimetre waves can theoretically transmit gigabits of data every second, up to 40 times more than today’s 4G LTE systems. Google ultimately envisages thousands of high altitude “self-flying aircraft” delivering internet access around the world. However, millimetre wave transmissions have a much shorter range than mobile phone signals. A broadcast at 28GHz, the frequency Google is testing at Spaceport America, would fade out in around a tenth the distance of a 4G phone signal. To get millimetre wave working from a high-flying drone, Google needs to experiment with focused transmissions from a so- called phased array. The SkyBender system is being tested with an “optionally piloted” aircraft called Centaur as well as solar-powered drones made by Google Titan, a division formed when Google acquired New Mexico startup Titan Aerospace in 2014. Titan built high-altitude solar-powered drones with wingspans of up to 50 metres. Emails between Spaceport America and Google project managers reveal that the aircraft have exclusive use of the Spaceport’s runway during the tests and will even venture above the neighbouring White Sands Missile Range. Google spent several months last summer building two communication installations on concrete pads at Spaceport America. Project SkyBender is part of the little-known Google Access team, which also includes Project Loon, a plan to deliver wireless internet using unpowered balloons floating through the stratosphere. Anderson expects Virgin Galactic to unveil its new SpaceShipTwo at the Spaceport in February, and to begin flights there in 2018. Google declined to comment.

New Mexico Spaceport Authority, Mark Harris

Trials at New Mexico’s Spaceport Authority are using new millimetre wave technology to deliver data from drones - potentially 40 times faster than 4G. The flight control centre New Mexico Spaceport Center where Google has been testing solar-powered drones The flight control office at the New Mexico Spaceport Center where Google has been testing solar-powered drones. Google is testing solar-powered drones at Spaceport America in New Mexico to explore ways to deliver high-speed internet from the air, the Guardian has learned. In a secretive project codenamed SkyBender, the technology giant built several prototype transceivers at the isolated spaceport last summer, and is testing them with multiple drones, according to documents obtained under public records laws. In order to house the drones and support aircraft, Google is temporarily using 15,000 square feet of hangar space in the glamorous Gateway to Space terminal designed by Richard Foster for the much-delayed Virgin Galactic spaceflights. The tech company has also installed its own dedicated flight control centre in the nearby Spaceflight Operations Center, Twenty-two student teams are heading to California this summer to test their design prototype at the world’s first Hyperloop Test Track. More than 115 student engineering teams representing 27 U.S. states and 20 countries were at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, this weekend participating in SpaceX’s Hyperloop Pod Competition Design Weekend. The teams presented their plans for the overall pod design and were judged on a variety of criteria including

22 Student Teams Will Test Pod Design at SpaceX Hyperloop Test Track innovation and uniqueness of design; full Hyperloop system applicability and economics; level of design detail; strength of supporting analysis and tests; feasibility for test tract competition; and quality of documentation and presentation. The Top 5 student teams for the design and build category were: Best Overall Design Award MIT Hyperloop Team, Massachusetts Institute of

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