Narrator: And Helios now begins the process of turning her back to the sun,
to maximize the power from her solar array.
(Music)
As the sky gets darker, and the outside air temperatures drop
below minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit,
the most environmentally hostile segment of Helios's journey
has gone by without notice,
except for being recorded by specially designed data acquisition systems
and their associated sensors.
Approaching a peak radar altitude of 96,863 feet,
at 4:12 p.m., Helios is standing on top of 98 percent of the Earth's atmosphere.
This is more than 10,000 feet higher
than the previous world's altitude record held by the SR-71 Blackbird.
(Applause)
PM: That plane has many purposes, but it's aimed for communications,
and it can fly so slowly that it'll just stay up at 65,000 feet.
Eventually, it will be able to have to stay up day, night, day, night,
for six months at a time, acting like the synchronous satellite,
but only ten miles above the Earth.
Let's have the next video. This shows the other end of the spectrum.
(Video) Narrator: A tiny airplane, the AV Pointer serves for surveillance.