Radio-Controlled Solar Plane

Air transport is notorious environmentally unfriendly. Although aerospace innovations, such as NASA’s Pathfinder and Solar Impulse’s all-solar flight around the world, provide some promise, solar powered commercial flight remains out of reach. Yet these developments have given us hope that more environmentally conscious solutions are only a few resourceful engineers away. With this project, we aimed to be those resourceful engineers.

In order to not only foster interest in the wonder that is flight, but also in the potential of solar energy, the YUAA RC Solar Plane team designed and built a solar plane similar to Solar Impulse’s revolutionary aircraft. This project gave STEM and non-STEM majors alike a fundamental understanding of flight, aerodynamics, design, and solar energy, as well as hard skills such as soldering, circuitry, and monokoting.