The Skydweller drone was last seen on the flight tracking service. Flight radar 24 north of Cancun, Mexico, in the early morning hours of May 4. The company described the drone as finally performing a “controlled water ditch” around 6:30 a.m. ET, but the plane “subsequently sank due to its non-buoyant composite structure.”
When it sank, the Skydweller drone had made a record solar-powered flight of eight days and 14 minutes, longer than any previous flight as a drone or manned aircraft. The company Skydweller Aero commemorated it as an “operational prototype” that had “validated the practical military utility of a medium-altitude persistent solar aircraft” despite the loss at sea.
Flights with Skydweller drones in July 2025.
The plane’s previous achievements will almost certainly live on in the public imagination. Solar Impulse 2 became the first solar-powered aircraft to circumnavigate the globe after completing a series of flights between 2015 and 2016. Along the way, it marked a milestone. world record for the longest flight in a solar-powered aircraft when André Borschberg piloted the plane for 117 hours and 52 minutes (nearly five days) during a 5,545-mile (8,924-kilometer) trip between Nagoya, Japan and Hawaii.
Now, the Skydweller drone crash means the Swiss Transport Museum in Lucerne will not be able to display the historic aircraft under an original agreement with Skydweller Aero, according to SWI Swissinfo. This represents a blow to aviation enthusiasts unless future salvage operations can be carried out.
Nevertheless, this pioneering design may inspire future solar-powered aircraft for civil or military use. Skydweller Aero told Ars that it has no other prototypes immediately ready to replace the lost drone, but the company’s blog post described “planned upgrades using existing technology” that could allow future solar-powered drones to better withstand extreme weather conditions. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has proposed investing at least 54 billion dollars in drone warfare systems.
