Study and Analysis of Unmanned Solar Powered Vehicles Thite |

ABSTRACT:

Stratosphericplatforms, geostationary located at altitudes  of   17 – 25 km, offer the  possibility of becoming   a  new    generation   of  infrastructural elements for future Earth  observation and  telecommunication   systems. They can act as pseudo- satellites, but   with   the  advantage  of  being  much cheaper and  closer  to the ground and  they  can per- form   missions  that  offer   greater  flexibility.  They could be self-launched, easily recovered for maintenance, whenevernecessary, and moved to cover different regions,  if  desired.  They   allow   a more detailed land  vision, due totheir  relative closeness to the  Earth, at  a much lower  cost than conventional satellites; furthermore they are geostationary locatedand  do not suffer from typical  satellite revisiting time limits  from 12 h up to 20 days. These  platforms could cover  a wide range of applications: real-time monitoring of seismic-risks or volcanicareas,  early  forest fire detection, border securitysurveillance, pipeline, and  power-linesurveys;  telecommunication servicessuch  as cellular-telephone networks,photogram- metry,  hydrographicmonitoring system, agriculture monitoring, etc.