Titan Aerospace

Titan Aerospace is an American aerospace company based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. They develop and manufacture special drones. Since 2013, the company is run by Vern Raburn, former CEO of Eclipse Aviation, and prior to that, Symantec. Raburn was also an early employee of Microsoft during its start-up phase.^[1][2] In April 2014, Titan Aerospace announced its acquisition by Google Inc.^[3][4] Google may plan to use Titan Aerospace to develop unmanned aerial vehicles capable of bringing Internet connectivity to remote parts of the world.

Product

The company manufactures unmanned aircraft under the designation AtmoSat logo. The so-called "atmospheric satellites" or Solar Powered Atmospheric Satellite Drones travel up to 20 kilometers high, can have satellite typical functions, take for example weather and fire monitoring or space photography. Equipped with a solar drive they can, according to the company, fly continuously up to five years and thereby cover four million kilometers.

Type

• Solara 50, with 50-meter wingspan and 15 meters in length, was presented at the fair AUVSI's Unmanned Systems in Washington.^[5][6] Solara 50 can accommodate a payload of 32 kilograms.
• Solara 60, with a payload of more than 100 kg.

The Solara AtmoSat platform offers customers around the world real-time images of the earth, voice and data services, navigation and mapping of services and monitoring systems of the atmosphere. The systems are able to provide signal coverage over 17,800 square kilometers, so a single Solara drone has a greater range than 100 terrestrial cell towers.

Purchase by Google

In mid-April 2014, it was announced that Google bought the company.^[7][8] The function of the company operates under the Project Loon.^[9]

According to Manager Magazine at the beginning of March 2014 Facebook offered $60 million to buy the company.^[10] Techcrunch further reported that Facebook wants to use the drones to supply areas with no internet connection with affordable network access.^[11]

See also

• Alphabet Inc. - parent company
• List of mergers and acquisitions by Google
• Unmanned aerial vehicle - technology

External links

• Titan Aerospace - official site
• "Titan Aerospace Appoints Vern Raburn as Chairman and CEO". Unmanned Systems Technology. 17 Oct 2013. Retrieved 2014-11-01. 
• Titan Aerospace Developing World's First Solar-Powered Atmospheric Satellite Drones, inhabitat.com 

References

1. ↑ "Vern Raburn as Chairman and CEO - Titan Aerospace". Titan Aerospace. Archived from the original on 2013-11-01. 
2. ↑ Mayfield, Dan (Oct 16, 2013). "Vern Raburn tapped to lead unmanned aircraft startup". Albuquerque Business First. Archived from the original on 2013-10-24. 
3. ↑ "Google kauft Drohnen-Anbieter Titan Aerospace" (text/html). Cashys Blog (in German). Cashys Blog. 2014-04-14. Retrieved 2014-04-14. 
4. ↑ "Titan Aerospace – Solar Atmospheric Satellites". Titan Aerospace Homepage. Titan Aerospace. 2014-04-14. Archived from the original (text/html) on 2014-04-14. Retrieved 2014-04-14. 
5. ↑ Titan to Hold a Press Conference In D.C. at AUVSI
6. ↑ "Titan to Hold a Press Conference In D.C. at AUVSI - Titan Aerospace" (PDF). Photon.info. 1 August 2013. Retrieved 1 November 2014. 
7. ↑ "Google buys Titan Aerospace of Moriarty". abqjournal.com. 
8. ↑ "Globale Internetversorgung – Google steigt ins Drohnengeschäft ein" (in German). spiegel.de. 
9. ↑ Saunders, Stephen (Oct 15, 2014). "Forget the Internet, Brace for Skynet". Lightreading.com. Retrieved 1 November 2014. 
10. ↑ "Facebook wird sich an der Drohnen-Firma beteiligen" (in German). manager-magazin.de. March 2014. 
11. ↑ "Facebook Buying Drone Maker Titan Aerospace". TechCrunch. 4 March 2014.