Perlan

Perlan 2, the record-setting, high-altitude glider, performed its first flight demo on Tuesday.

In the early 1990s, NASA test pilot Einar Enevoldson set out to prove that gliders could catch mountain waves and soar to extreme altitudes. With the Perlan Mission, Enevoldson set out with a very ambitious goal: to soar into the stratosphere – the atmospheric layer between the troposphere and the mesosphere. On August 30, 2006, […]

The Perlan 2 high altitude glider has achieved another altitude record over the high peaks in the southern part of the Patagonia mountain range. After being pulled to an altitude of 42,000 feet, the Perlan 2 continued to climb past 62,000 feet. This altitude is beyond the Armstrong Line, which defines the point beyond which […]

The Perlan glider team is continuing its mission to reach greater heights. The team is currently in South America attempting to catch the mountain waves of the Patagonia mountain range in the southwestern corner of Argentina. A Grob Egrett turboprop towed Perlan 2 on its 48th flight to just over 44,000 feet before releasing it […]

The Airbus Perlan 2 has reached new heights, breaking the world record for a glider flight as it soared to 52,172 feet. An Aero Boero AB-180 tow plane pulled chief pilot Jim Payne and co-pilot Morgan Sandercock off the ground at Comandante Armando Tola International Airport, which sits at an elevation of 669 feet in […]

The Airbus Perlan Mission II sailplane broke its own record this week, soaring to 30,615 feet out of the Minden-Tahoe Airport in the Sierra Nevada mountain range in western Nevada. The glider was flown by Perlan chief pilot Jim Payne and pilot and flight test engineer Miguel Iturmendi. The Perlan 2 team recently made modifications […]

Before aviator and businessman-explorer Steve Fossett died in 2007, the Perlan I stratospheric glider’s record flight above 50,000 convinced him and his partners, NASA test pilot Einar Enevoldson and meteorologist Elizabeth Austin, that higher altitudes were certainly possible. In the next month or so, the pressurized Perlan 2 plans to make the team’s dream of […]

The Perlan 2 atmospheric glider departed the U.S. this week, on a container ship no less, headed to El Calafate, Argentina, following six months of intensive flight testing in Minden, Nevada. Once it arrives in the Andes region, the aircraft will be reassembled to begin its high-altitude climate research mission. Lacking an engine that could […]

The Airbus Perlan Mission 2, a project that aims to take a glider to the very edge of space next year to gain scientific insight into the Earth’s upper atmosphere and perhaps lay the groundwork for eventual flights on Mars, celebrated the opening of the new Dennis Tito Perlan 2 Hangar at Minden/Tahoe Municipal Airport […]