Founder of Facebook's secretive Aquila drone project leaves as internal emails reveal significant new direction
- Andrew Cox, the founder of the drone company that Facebook acquired in 2014, has left the company.
- The departure comes as Facebook appears to be making a big change to Aquila, its secretive internet drone project.
- Internal emails and documents obtained by Business Insider indicate it is planning to redesign its aircraft so they can land on traditional runways.
- The company also explored and abandoned plans to build a drone base, including a dedicated hangar and a landing zone, in the New Mexico desert.
The head of Facebook's secretive efforts to build Internet-providing drones has left amid major changes in direction for the project, raising questions about whether the internet company is still committed to its ambitious and expensive drone mission.
Andrew Cox, the engineer who founded the Aquila project to develop solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that fly for months at a time and provide wireless internet for the developing world, departed Facebook in May 2018 after more than four years at the company.
Meanwhile, internal documents and emails obtained by Business Insider reveal that Facebook has told partners it is planning a redesign of its drones, and held extensive talks with a futuristic "spaceport" in the New Mexico desert about building a hangar and landing zone for experimental aircraft but then abandoned the lease it had with the facility.
The emails, sent between employees of Facebook and Spaceport America throughout 2016 and 2017, reveal Facebook's effort to build custom drone facilities in the southwestern US state. The documents include maps, plans, and other details about a planned partnership to create a new base for Aquila (the Latin word for "eagle").
And the documents indicate that Facebook plans to rework how its unmanned aircraft land - one of the most controversial aspects of the project.
The various changes within Facebook's drone project highlight the challenges that internet companies have faced in ambitious efforts to build drones, satellites and other aircraft aimed at extending the reach of their internet services. Google, one of Facebook's biggest rivals, has scaled back its drone efforts, known as Project Wing. Google also sold a satellite company it had acquired, though it continues to invest in its Loon internet balloon project. (In 2016, one of Facebook's Internet.org satellites was also destroyed as it prepared to launch, though the fault lay with SpaceX's rocket.)
Facebook has touted its Aquila drone as an important part of its plan to bring internet connectivity (and Facebook's service) to remote regions of the world. But in the four years since Facebook announced the effort, the company has faced numerous problems and criticisms about its privacy practices and its role in the spread of misinformation.
Spaceport America, the facility Facebook has held talks with, aims to be a port for commercial spaceflight - a stepping stone for humanity's travels into outer space. But as The Atlantic reported in March 2018, commercial flights have yet to begin, leaving the facility functioning largely as a "futuristic tourist attraction."
A Facebook spokesperson did not immediately respond to Business Insider's queries about Cox's departure or the status of its Aquila project. The company had earlier told Business Insider that while it had held a short-term lease at Spaceport America, it has since expired, it ultimately only conducted some "lightweight site prep" at the facility.
Spaceport America did not respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Mark Zuckerberg's drone 'lieutenant' has left
British engineer Andrew Cox joined Facebook in April 2014 - when the company paid nearly $20 million to acquire the team he led at Ascenta, a UK unmanned aerial vehicle company.
In 2016, The Verge reported that after the acquisition Cox became "[Mark] Zuckerberg's top lieutenant" on Aquila.
According to his LinkedIn profile, he "set up the Facebook team to design, develop and operate Aquila 1 UAV," as well as setting up the "design and build facility at Bridgwater [in the UK] and flight test facility in the US," and "led the recruitment of the team in both UK and US."
But in May 2018, Cox left Facebook, according to his profile. It's not immediately clear why he left, or what he is doing now.
Facebook's public comments about Aquila have also become less frequent. The futuristic drone was nowhere to be seen at this year's F8 developer conference. The company's famous 10 year roadmap slide mentioned "high altitude tech" and satellites under the "Connectivity" header this year, whereas in 2017 the chart specifically said "drones."
Job listings mentioning Aquila are also tough to find on the company's career page; a marked change from years past, when listings for thermal engineers and aeronautical experts were frequent.
Facebook appeared to be moving towards a traditional landing system for its drones
The Aquila Project raised eyebrows in June 2016, after a controversial test flight in Arizona.
Facebook had lauded the success of the trial sortie in media interviews, but it had not disclosed that the aircraft had crashed down to earth and damaged itself in the process.
This is because historically, Aquila drones aren't fitted with normal aircraft landing gear. Instead, the Boeing 747-sized drone simply descends onto a specially prepared circle of dirt or gravel, where the drone grinds to a halt.
"The Aquila aircraft has no landing gear in the traditional sense. It lands on Kevlar pads bonded to the bottom of the motor pods," Facebook employee Martin Luis Gomez wrote in a public blog post in June 2017 after a second test flight.
"The rationale is twofold: 1) We land at very low groundspeed and descent rates, so we can save the weight and drag of struts and wheels, and 2) much of the aircraft's mass is concentrated in the motor pods, since this is where the batteries are installed; once the batteries land, stopping the descent of the rest of the aircraft imposes little load on the structure."
However, in two public test flights of the Aquila drone this set-up has proven problematic. During the first landing, part of a wing snapped off during. The second was more successful, but its propellers still failed to lock into the proper position - and the gravel also caused, in Facebook's words, "a few minor, easily repairable dings."
An email exchange between Spaceport America executive Bill Gutman and Facebook employee Kevin Slover in September 2017 - after the crash landings - suggests that Facebook is now looking at more traditional landing procedures, using a runway like an ordinary fixed-wing aircraft.
"The plan is for a typical runway takeoff and landing rather than the circle," Slover wrote.
It's not clear what prompted this change in direction for Facebook, but it could indicate the company plans to increase the frequency of test flights and utilize a less abrasive landing procedure.
The struggles of building a runway, from nesting birds to archeological sites
Facebook was talking to Spaceport America since at least May 2016, and conducted multiple on-site meetings, calls, and meetings over the following year. The codename that Spaceport used for Facebook's drone project was "Denali," according to the documents.
The early emails show that Facebook was interested in building a landing circle and dedicated aircraft hangar at the remote facility, similar to the one it has utilized in Arizona, with Slover telling Spaceport America employees "we can land on dirt." Discussions about the exact specifications of the circle (will it be 1,200 feet in diameter, or 2,000?) and its precise location on Spaceport America's premises continued until at least February 2017.
The documents also highlight the potential complications and concerns Spaceport America and Facebook had to take into account while planning, from the risks of avoiding nesting birds to the potential presence of archeological sites in the area, and Facebook's desire to plant native grasses in the area after clearing it of obstacles.
And they also highlight a fun perk of doing business with a spaceport: Spaceport America encourages visitors with their own planes to land directly on their runway when visiting. (It's not clear if Facebook employees ever arrived by air or took advantage of this offer.)
An email exchange in April 2017 indicated that Facebook was intending to build a hangar as recently as April 2017, with Slover inquiring about whether Spaceport America would be able to provide internet connectivity to the planned building. "We have been considering using our own equipment to provide the backbone to our hangar, but our team would like to explore your solution as well," he wrote. (In secretive fashion, Slover's LinkedIn profile lists him only as a "manager" in "real estate development" at a Fortune 500 company, with a specialty in "Comm Ground Stations, [and] Remotely Piloted and Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Center Infrastructure (RPAS/UAS) Data Center Site Selection and Consulting.")
After that exchange, however, the next flurry of emails came in September 2017, which concerned the change in direction and indicated a landing circle would no longer be necessary, without reference to the hangar.
In a statement, a Facebook spokesperson said the company's lease at the site has now expired: "Beginning in 2016 we worked with Spaceport to see if their facility could be a potential test site for our connectivity efforts. Because site investments like these require a long lead time, we often pursue multiple options at once and make initial investments and preparations so we can move quickly if we end up needing to use that site."
They added: "We ultimately signed a short-term lease with Spaceport and worked with them on some lightweight site prep, but we have no plans for further investment or any operations at this time."
The spokesperson did not respond to questions about whether Facebook's decision to renew the lease was related to the change in direction for Aquila detailed in the September 2017 emails, or to questions about the reason for the change.
Facebook is still conducting some tests in New Mexico
Public information on the Aquila project in the last year has been relatively sparse.
In October 2017, Facebook published a blog post detailing the components of a HAPS (High Altitude Platform Station) connectivity network. It said it would be the first in a series of blog posts about Aquila in "the coming months," but never followed up on it.
In November, Facebook announced it was also working with Airbus to "advance spectrum and aviation policy and continue to demonstrate the viability of HAPS systems for providing broadband connectivity" (Airbus is also building its own unmanned aerial vehicles).
As such, the departure of Andrew Cox and the Facebook-Spaceport America documents shed light on the status of the drone project - but also throw up new questions. Why did Cox leave, and where does hs departure leave Aquila? Why is Facebook apparently preparing to abandon the landing mechanism it had previously lauded and defended? Will Facebook continue to test and operate its existing prototypes with their unconventional landing setup alongside new aircraft that use runways? When, where, and how will Facebook's next generation of experimental aircraft take flight?
Facebook has since been issued permits to conduct tests of experimental wireless communications equipment in Truth and Consequences, Nevada, the desert town that is home to the Spaceport, as Business Insider previously reported. It's not clear whether these tests were conducted at Spaceport America, or at another nearby facility in the desert.
Based on the information available in the filings, one expert speculated that the project could be related to testing wireless signal strength, an essential component of drone technology, and that New Mexico could offer ideal conditions to do so.
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