The Skydweller drone was last seen on flight-tracking service Flight Radar 24 north of Cancún, Mexico, on the morning of May 4. The company described the drone as making a “controlled water dig” around 6:30 a.m. Eastern Time, but the aircraft “subsequently sank due to its non-buoyant overall structure.”
By the time it was finished, the Skydweller drone had performed a record-breaking, solar-powered flight of eight days and 14 minutes – longer than any previous flight as a drone or crewed aircraft. The company Skydweller Aero celebrated it as an “operational prototype” that had “validated the practical military utility of a persistent, medium-altitude solar aircraft” despite losses at sea.
Skydweller drone flights in July 2025.
The aircraft’s past achievements will almost certainly remain 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. Additionally, it set the world record for the longest flight in a solar-powered aircraft when André Borschberg piloted the aircraft for 117 hours and 52 minutes – nearly five days – during a 5,545-mile (8,924-kilometer) trip between Nagoya, Japan, and Hawaii.
Now, according to SWI Swissinfo, the crash of the Skydweller drone means that the Swiss Museum of Transport in Lucerne will not get the chance to display the historic aircraft in accordance with an original agreement with Skydweller Aero. This is a blow to aviation enthusiasts unless a rescue operation can be conducted in the future.
Yet the pioneering design could inspire future solar-powered aircraft for civilian or military use. Skydweller Aero told Ars it doesn’t have another prototype immediately ready to replace the lost drone — but the company’s blog post described “planned upgrades using existing technology” that could make future solar-powered drones better able to withstand extreme weather conditions. Meanwhile, the Pentagon has proposed investing at least $54 billion in drone warfare systems.
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