After various tests on the virtual prototype (such as making sure vital systems are insulated from lightning strikes), its ceiling, rate of climb and other handling characteristics are fed into a flight simulator.

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The firm has just successfully completed tests on a 30 kW prototype to see if its control system lets it launch, hover, generate power and land without human intervention.

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Already, tests carried out with a prototype at the Palomar Observatory in California have achieved astrometric resolutions of 100 millionths of an arcsecond, and the improved atmospheric conditions in Hawaii will increase this by a factor of three.

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