MIT Daedalus
| Daedalus | |
|---|---|
 |
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| MIT Daedalus human powered aircraft in flight during testing at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center | |
| Role | Human powered aircraft |
| National origin | United States |
| Manufacturer | MIT - (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) |
| First flight | 23 April 1988 |
The MIT Aeronautics and Astronautics Department's Daedalus was a human-powered aircraft that, on 23 April 1988, flew a distance of 72.4 mi (115.11 km) in 3 hours, 54 minutes, from Iraklion on the island of Crete to the island of Santorini. The flight holds official FAI world records for total distance, straight-line distance, and duration for human-powered aircraft.
The craft was named after the mythological inventor of aviation, Daedalus, and was inspired by the Greek myth of Daedalus' escape from Crete using manmade wings.
There were actually three aircraft constructed:
Both Daedalus 87 and Daedalus 88' weighed 31 kg (69 lb).
All three aircraft were constructed at the MIT Lincoln Lab Flight Facility at Hanscom Field outside Boston, Massachusetts, by a team of undergraduate students, faculty, and recent graduates of MIT.
The MIT Daedalus project was the follow-on to several earlier human-powered aircraft flown at MIT, and was designed by veterans of the Chrysalis HPA and the MIT Monarch and Monarch-B missions.
Light Eagle (known to the flight crew as MLE, or Emily) set a closed-course distance record with Glen Tremml as the pilot, as well as straight-line, closed-course, and duration women's records with Lois McCallin as pilot. These record flights took place at Edwards AFB (NASA Dryden Flight Research Center) in January, 1987.
Light Eagle had been in storage in Manassas, VA, but in 2009 was restored and adapted for use as an unmanned solar-powered aircraft testbed by Aurora Flight Sciences.
Daedalus 87 was the first of the two Daedalus airplanes constructed, and was flight tested extensively at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in California. During flight testing, Daedalus 87 was damaged in a crash caused by spiral divergence, with the rudder not able to supply enough control authority to recover from a disturbance-initiated right turn. The aircraft suffered damage to the right wing, fuselage, and propeller. Daedalus 87 was repaired and returned to service to act as a backup airplane to Daedalus 88.
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