Facebook revealed the maiden flight of its vaguely terrifying internet drone. The solar-powered, carbon-fiber plane with a wingspan comparable to a Boeing 737’s took flight for about 90 minutes at a test facility in Arizona. Facebook hopes to use it to beam down internet access to remote areas, eventually staying aloft for months at a time.
A few years ago, Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg launched Internet.org, an initiative to bring internet to the poorest part of the world, and these internet-beaming super drones are part ofZuckerberg’s plan to coat the world in internet. The company has beencriticized in the past for potentially being able to profit from the internet access it aims to facilitate.