The Skydweller drone was last seen on the flight tracking service Flight radar 24 Early morning on May 4 north of Cancun, Mexico. The company described the drone as finally performing a “controlled water dump” around 6:30 a.m. ET, but the aircraft “subsequently sank due to its floating composite structure.”
By the time it landed, the Skydweller drone had completed a record-breaking, solar-powered flight of eight days and 14 minutes—longer than any previous flight by an unmanned or manned aircraft. Skydweller Aero cited it as an “operational prototype” that, despite losses at sea, “confirmed the practical military utility of a stable, mid-altitude solar aircraft.”
Skydweller drone flights in July 2025.
The aircraft’s previous achievements will almost always remain in the public imagination. Solar Impulse 2 became the first solar-powered aircraft to orbit the world after completing a series of flights between 2015 and 2016. world record For the longest flight in a solar-powered plane, André Borschberg flew the plane for 117 hours and 52 minutes (about five days) during a 5,545-mile (8,924-kilometer) trip between Nagoya, Japan, and Hawaii.
Now the crash of the Skydweller drone means Switzerland’s Lucerne Transport Museum will no longer be able to display the historic aircraft under an original agreement with Skydweller Aero. SWI Swissinfo. It is a blow to aviation enthusiasts if future rescue operations are not carried out.
The pioneering design could nevertheless inspire future solar-powered aircraft for civilian or military use. Skydweller Aero told Ars it doesn’t have any other prototypes immediately ready to replace the lost drone, but the company’s blog post described “planned improvements using existing technology” that could make future solar-powered drones better able to withstand extreme weather conditions. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has at least offered to invest 54 billion dollars to drone combat systems.
