A solar powered drone recently set a new record by staying airborne at high altitudes for almost 26 days straight. Airbus, the company behind the drone, says they have plenty of plans for it including military applications as well as monitoring of wildfires and disaster zones.

Airbus announced that its latest model of the Zephyr drone landed near Yuma, Arizona last week after flying continuously for 25 days, 23hrs and 57 minutes, breaking the world record. The previous record was held by a earlier version prototype of the Zephyr, which stayed in the air for 14 days back in 2014.  Speaking to Live Science, the spokesman of Airbus, Alan Dupiech, said that the drone is driven by electric energy from solar panels mounted on its wings during the day. At night, it uses the stored battery power. During the day, the drone can fly at an altitude of 70,000 feet while at night it drops down to 50,000 feet.

Airbus is hoping their latest Zephyr drone will find success in the commercial space satellite market by carrying out tasks such as environmental monitoring or high altitude photography for weeks or even months at a time.  A typical rocket launch by NASA, SpaceX or other space exploration organizations can cost hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Airbus, drones such as the Zephyr are the future as they are a lot cheaper and can do a better job than satellites.

The drones can also be refitted then redeployed on different missions unlike the satellites which usually have one job for many years, such as environmental monitoring or communications.  The altitudes that the drone flies at are also more suitable for research than satellites which orbit much higher up. The Zephyr operates at approximately 20 kilometers from earth, compared to satellites which operate at around 36,000 kilometers from earth. As such, the Zephyr can capture higher resolution photos and videos for various applications like disaster management and monitoring environmental patterns around the planet.

According to Airbus, one of the major breakthroughs in the development of the drone was reducing the weight. Although the Zephyr has a wingspan of over 80 feet, it weighs only about 70 kilograms.  Airbus has already started production of their latest Zephyr drone in the UK and their first customer is the Ministry of Defense, which runs Britain’s armed forces.