![]() ![]() When soaring at this altitude, the Perlan glider will experience an air density similar to the atmosphere of Mars. “But for the glider that we've built, we think its maximum altitude is going to be around 90,000 feet,” he added. Sandercock added that the team has calculations showing that stratospheric mountain waves can reach altitudes higher than 130,000 feet. “The number-one goal for the Perlan Project during this year's campaign in Argentina is to prove that the waves are as strong and that the waves go as high as our forecasts say they do,” Jim Payne, chief pilot and chairman of the Perlan Project, said during the briefing. Now that the world has somewhat recovered from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Perlan Project is once again ready to head to Argentina to set its next record. “We have a number of other great corporate sponsors, but we rely a lot on private donations as well, so Oshkosh was a chance for us to connect with some of those donors.” “Even though we weren't flying in Argentina, we did continue one of the things that we're always doing, which is fundraising.” Gardner added that Airbus has been a great sponsor since it partnered with the Perlan Project in 2014. “I think Oshkosh was a really, really positive experience for us,” Perlan Project pilot and simulator programmer Tim Gardner said during the briefing. In 2022, with plans to fly in Argentina still on hold, the Perlan Project brought its glider to EAA AirVenture in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, for a flight demonstration. The shipping industry had also been disrupted by the pandemic, so the team was unable to ship its glider to Argentina in time to take advantage of the polar vortex. By 2021, Argentina was still fairly locked down. First, a stratospheric warming event disrupted the polar vortex in 2019, which decreased the size of the stratospheric mountain waves. Then in 2020, the team’s plans were foiled by the Covid-19 pandemic, during which they were unable to travel to Argentina. It surpassed the Perlan 1 glider’s altitude record in 2017 and continued to shatter its own records three times with subsequent flights in 2018.įollowing the success of that flight test campaign, the team planned to fly to 90,000 feet in 2019, but a series of unfortunate circumstances delayed that flight. The Perlan 2 glider made its debut flight in 2015. Following the success of the first glider, the team built a second, pressurized glider optimized to fly near the edge of space. The team set its first world subsonic altitude record in 2006 with Perlan Mission 1, in which the pilots glided to an altitude of more than 50,000 feet (15 kilometers) over the Southern Andes Mountains. The Perlan Project has successfully flown gliders to high altitudes using this concept in the past. “It's on the downwind or eastern side of the Andes mountain range, where these waves that are triggered by the mountains get pushed up into the stratosphere by the polar vortex, so that each layer of winds stacked on top of the lower layers pushes the wave a little bit higher.” “The polar vortex swings around the South Pole and bounces off the Andes Mountains, so we're going to a place-El Calafate-that's almost as far south as you can go in Argentina,” Morgan Sandercock, the Perlan Project’s chief engineer, said Tuesday during a media briefing. ![]() The Perlan glider, which has no engines, will then soar to double that altitude by taking advantage of a rare atmospheric phenomenon known as “stratospheric mountain waves,” which form when mountain winds are boosted by the polar vortex. on May 1 to begin its journey to El Calafate, Argentina, where the flight-test campaign will take place. During the flight tests, a tow airplane will carry the piloted Perlan glider to an altitude of 40,000 to 45,000 feet. ![]() After setting a subsonic altitude record at over 76,000 feet (23 kilometers) in 2018, the Perlan 2 mission team will attempt to reach 90,000 feet (27 kilometers) during a flight-test campaign that will kick off in Argentina on July 22, the team announced on Tuesday.Īccording to the Perlan Project, the nonprofit organization behind the record-breaking mission, the Perlan 2 glider set sail from the U.S. Airbus is preparing to shoot for a world record with another flight of the Perlan 2 pressurized, high-altitude glider. ![]()
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