At the annual Aviation Week Laureate Awards ceremony held March 3, 2016, Aurora Flight Sciences´ Orion unmanned aircraft system (UAS) received the 2016 Laureate Award, in the “Innovation” category, the company said.
Orion achieves its endurance and range by optimizing several critical design parameters that characterize flight vehicle performance: aerodynamic efficiency, propulsive efficiency, structural efficiency and fuel fraction.
After the record setting flight of just over eighty hours, the Orion landed with enough fuel on board to have flown an additional sixty hours. In July, 2015, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) confirmed the Orion aircraft set the world record for duration of flight for a remotely controlled UAV.
Aurora Flight Sciences develops and manufactures advanced aerospace vehicles. The company is headquartered in Manassas, VA and operates production plants in Bridgeport, WV and Columbus, MS; and Research and Development Centers in Cambridge, MA and Mountain View, CA.
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