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The AS261 breaks new aviation ground in that it is the largest hot air airship to be certificated. With a pilot and four scientists it will be able to hover above the Amazonian rainforest for hours on end enabling scientific research impossible by any other means. Visible in the photo is the huge canopy that will be gently lowered onto the very roof of the forest allowing the scientists to be able to examine a region of the forest normally impossible to access.
Revolutionary Airship to Study Amazon Rainforest
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The world’s largest hot air airship ever built and flown has been rolled out at the Thunder & Colt airship base at Rednal, near Oswestry, UK and is now undergoing flight trials. The AS261 is a 261,000 cubic foot craft, specifically designed to be used in a unique ecological research project in the South American rain forests.
The AS261 breaks all the existing boundaries of airship technology. It is 47. 8m long, 20. 4m high and has a gross lift capacity of 2,100kg. It is the world’s first airship to be built and flown specifically for scientific purposes, the largest airship built in Britain since the ill-fated R100 in 1931 and the first hot air airship to fly with an underslung cargo weighing three quarters of a ton.
The AS261 has been commissioned by a French group, Hear topia, to play a key role in operation Radeau de Cimes (Raft of the Tree Tops). Piloted by Danny Cleyet Marrel, the AS261 will be used to land botanists from the Tropical Laboratory of Montpellier on the very canopy of the Brazilian rain forest.
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