50 Fun Facts About Drones

Which future film star was discovered by an Army photographer while assembling target drones in a wartime factory?

Marilyn Monroe, then an assembler called Norma Jeane Dougherty, was photographed on the Radioplane production line, which led to a screen test. The factory's founder, Reginald Denny, was an actor too.

Which future US president's older brother died in 1944 flying a bomber rigged to become a radio-controlled drone?

John F. Kennedy lost his brother Joe when the explosives-packed plane blew up before its two-man crew could bail out. Their father's presidential hopes then passed to the younger son.

Which 1930s British target plane is credited with inspiring the name 'drone' for pilotless aircraft?

Queen Bee was a pilotless Tiger Moth biplane that anti-aircraft gunners shot at for practice from 1935. A drone is a male honeybee, so the nickname is said to have followed naturally.

Zipline's drones became famous from 2016 for parachuting which emergency supply to hospitals in Rwanda?

Blood came first because transfusions cannot wait, and Rwanda's mountains and poor roads made flying far quicker than driving. Vaccines and other medicines were added to the service in 2018.

Dutch police trained which birds of prey to snatch rogue drones out of the sky with their talons?

Eagles won the job after a year of trials with a raptor-training firm, and the Dutch force then bought young bald eagles of its own. Handlers wear thick gloves because the talons are so sharp.

Which pop star opened her 2017 Super Bowl halftime show with 300 Intel drones forming the American flag?

Lady Gaga sang from the stadium roof while the LED-lit quadcopters glowed red, white and blue behind her. It was the first time such a drone display had featured in a television broadcast.

Which small NASA helicopter made the first powered flight on another planet, on Mars in 2021?

Ingenuity was built for just five test hops but went on to fly 72 times. Fixed beneath its solar panel was a scrap of fabric from the Wright brothers' 1903 Flyer.

Which Spanish singer sliced his hand grabbing a camera drone at a 2015 concert in Tijuana, then played on?

Enrique Iglesias often grabbed the drone mid-show to give fans a closer look at the stage, but this time it cut him. He performed for another half hour and then needed weeks to recover.

Which pizza chain partnered with drone firm Flirtey in 2016 to launch a delivery service in New Zealand?

Domino's billed it as the first commercial drone delivery service anywhere. Flirtey had already made America's first officially approved drone delivery, flying medical supplies to a Virginia clinic in 2015.

Which company's founder used a 2013 '60 Minutes' interview to reveal plans for delivering parcels by drone?

Amazon chief Jeff Bezos called the project Prime Air. Regular customer deliveries did not begin until 2022, nine years after the announcement.

A typical quadcopter has no rudder or flaps, so it steers by changing what about each of its four rotors?

Spin speed is all the flight computer adjusts: slowing the front pair tips the nose down and sends the drone forward. Full-size helicopters steer by changing the angle of their blades instead.

A drone propeller works on the Wright brothers' insight that each blade is a rotating version of which aircraft part?

A wing and a propeller blade share the same curved cross-section, which turns moving air into lift. The Wrights reused their own wind-tunnel data to design blades with a twist along their length.

Which Chinese company, begun by Frank Wang in his university dorm room, came to dominate the consumer drone market?

DJI grew from flight-control parts that Wang built as a student in Hong Kong into a Shenzhen giant. Its first fully assembled drone, the Phantom, went on sale in 2013.

Which US spy drone, armed with Hellfire missiles from 2001, shares its name with a 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger film?

Predator began as a camera-carrying scout; adding Hellfires made it the main remotely piloted strike aircraft over Afghanistan. The larger Reaper later took over that role.

Why do two of a quadcopter's four rotors turn clockwise while the other two turn counterclockwise?

To stop the body spinning: each rotor's torque tries to twist the drone the opposite way, so two opposed pairs cancel out. A helicopter needs a tail rotor to do the same job.

Why must the blades of NASA's Mars helicopter turn about ten times faster than those of a helicopter on Earth?

Thinner atmosphere is the problem: Mars has only about a hundredth as much air for a blade to push against. The planet's weaker gravity helps, but only partly makes up for it.

Which action-camera maker recalled its first drone, the Karma, in 2016 after units lost power and fell from the sky?

GoPro pulled all 2,500 Karmas it had sold only weeks after the first crash reports. Within a month the firm announced it was laying off about 15% of its staff.

Which high-altitude American spy drone became the first pilotless aircraft to cross the Pacific nonstop, in 2001?

Global Hawk flew nonstop from Edwards Air Force Base in California to RAAF Base Edinburgh in Australia. It entered service the same year as a long-endurance surveillance aircraft.

Which term describes a drone swivelling left or right around its vertical axis, like a head shaking 'no'?

Yaw is one of three rotations every aircraft has, alongside pitch (nose up or down) and roll (tipping side to side). On an aeroplane, the rudder on the tail fin does this job.

A drone's electronic compass works out which way the aircraft is pointing by sensing what?

Earth's magnetic field gives the compass a fixed reference, just as it swings a hiker's needle north. The sensor is now so small and cheap that it fits inside a single microchip.

Which Japanese motorcycle maker built the R-MAX, a remote-controlled helicopter developed in the 1990s to spray crops?

Yamaha put the R-MAX to work on precise aerial crop spraying years before camera quadcopters reached hobbyists. It has since been used for surveys and disaster response as well.

Which country builds the Bayraktar TB2, a combat drone celebrated in a 2022 Ukrainian patriotic song?

Turkey's Baykar company makes it, and 'Bayraktar' means standard-bearer in Turkish. A Ukrainian soldier wrote the song after the drones were used against invading Russian troops.

A drone's propellers push air down and the air pushes the drone up, showing which of Newton's principles?

Third law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Shove enough air downward each second and the upward push beats the drone's weight, so it climbs.

Which phenomenon lets a helicopter or drone hover on less power when it is very close to the surface below?

Ground effect arises because the surface blocks the air a rotor throws downward, giving more thrust for the same effort. Some early underpowered helicopters could hover only while they stayed low.

A research drone nicknamed SnotBot hovers over which animals to collect samples that reveal their health?

Whales blast out a mix of mucus and other material with every breath, and scientists can read a great deal from it. The drone simply flies through the spout to catch some.

Crews at Creech Air Force Base fly Reaper drones over distant continents from a desert site near which US city?

Las Vegas is the nearest big city to the Nevada base, whose pilots and sensor operators hunt for targets through the drones' cameras while flying missions across the globe.

Which sensor, the same kind that tells a phone screen to rotate, lets a drone feel which way is down?

Accelerometer chips sense the steady pull of gravity, so a drone can tell when it is tilting. Paired with gyroscopes, they keep a hovering drone level without any help from the pilot.

Which name is given to a drone that has twice as many rotors as a quadcopter?

Octocopter comes from the Greek for eight, the same root that gives an octopus its name. Designs with three and six rotors are called tricopters and hexacopters.

Updrafts kept helicopters away, so firefighters used camera drones to track the 2019 blaze at which Paris landmark?

Notre-Dame was watched from above by drones carrying ordinary and thermal cameras, which showed crews where the fire was spreading. Robots were sent in as well to help direct the water.

Reported drone sightings closed which London airport's runway before Christmas 2018, disrupting 140,000 passengers?

Gatwick cancelled hundreds of flights over three days, its worst disruption since the 2010 Icelandic ash cloud. Two local people were arrested, then cleared and paid compensation.

Many drones hold a steady height using an on-board barometer, a sensor that measures what?

Air pressure falls steadily as you climb, so a lower reading tells the drone it has risen. The same instrument hung on a wall helps forecast the weather.

Which software feature uses satellite positioning to stop a drone from flying into restricted airspace?

Geofencing draws invisible boundaries on a map that the drone's own software refuses to cross, whatever the pilot commands. A US senator once proposed making it compulsory for every manufacturer.

A then-record 1,218 Intel drones formed the Olympic rings for the opening ceremony of which Winter Games host?

Pyeongchang viewers in 2018 were actually watching a recording. The live drone flight was cancelled at the last minute, so television showed a version filmed the previous December.

Which 2015 thriller stars Helen Mirren as a British colonel weighing a drone strike on a house in Nairobi?

Eye in the Sky turns one decision about one strike into a debate on the ethics of drone warfare. It was the last live-action film of Alan Rickman, who died in January 2016.

Which satellite navigation system, owned by the US Space Force, lets drones hold position and fly themselves home?

GPS began as a military project and still belongs to the Space Force, though anyone can use its signals. Europe's Galileo, Russia's GLONASS and China's BeiDou are rival constellations.

Most modern radio-control systems for drones and model aircraft use which band, shared with home Wi-Fi?

2.4 GHz is also home to cordless phones and baby monitors, so it is a crowded band. Radio-control sets cope by hopping rapidly between frequencies rather than sitting on one.

Which moon is the destination of NASA's Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered rotorcraft designed to fly between landing sites?

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is to be explored in short flights, with the craft touching down at 20 to 30 places over about three years. Its battery recharges from a radioisotope power source.

In 'Spider-Man: Far From Home', which villain stages fake monster attacks using projectors and weaponised drones?

Mysterio is really Quentin Beck, a sacked Stark Industries illusion specialist played by Jake Gyllenhaal. His monsters, the Elementals, are only projections.

Which type of rechargeable battery, prized for storing lots of energy at low weight, powers most small drones?

Lithium polymer packs, known as LiPos, squeeze more energy into each gram than older rechargeables. They demand careful handling, because a pack that is misused can catch fire.

What powered a NASA remotely piloted flying wing that climbed to a record 96,863 feet in 2001?

Sunlight falling on more than 62,000 solar cells drove the electric motors of the aircraft, named Helios after the Greek sun god. It stayed above 96,000 feet for more than 40 minutes.

Which bird did AeroVironment copy for a DARPA-funded spy drone that flies on flapping wings and carries a video camera?

Hummingbird in looks and in flight, the Nano Hummingbird was built to resemble the real bird while filming for surveillance. It could stay airborne for up to 11 minutes.

A US military spy drone grew out of SeaScan, a civilian design meant to help commercial fishing boats find which fish?

Tuna boats were the intended customers for SeaScan, which was also conceived as a flying weather sensor. Its military descendant lands by snagging a rope hung from a tall pole.

Which kind of electric motor, with no sliding contacts to wear out, drives most drone propellers?

Brushless motors swap rubbing carbon contacts for electronic switching, so less power is lost to friction. That efficiency is why most electric radio-controlled models use them.

In the abbreviation UAV, a formal name aviation authorities use for a drone, what does the U stand for?

Unmanned aerial vehicle is the formal term for an aircraft with no pilot, crew or passengers on board. Add the pilot's controller and radio links and the whole set-up is called a UAS, the S standing for system.

Which inventor showed off a radio-controlled boat at Madison Square Garden in 1898, long before remote-piloted drones?

Nikola Tesla called his boat a 'telautomaton' and tried to sell the idea to the US military as a radio-guided torpedo. They showed little interest.

Which French company launched the AR.Drone in 2010, an early hobby quadcopter flown from a phone or tablet app?

Parrot unveiled the quadcopter at the CES trade show in 2010, together with the iOS apps used to steer it. Control from Android devices was also supported.

Which motorised mount keeps a drone's camera steady and level while the aircraft tilts and turns?

Gimbal motors cancel out every tilt and shake, so the picture stays smooth. Sailors used the same idea long before, hanging ships' compasses in gimbals to keep them level in rough seas.

Drone racers wear video goggles to fly as if sitting in the cockpit, a style known by which name?

First-person view, or FPV, feeds live video from a camera on the drone straight to the pilot's goggles. The method is also called remote-person view or video piloting.

Which Italian city did Austrian forces attack in 1849 with pilotless bomb-carrying balloons, a forerunner of drones?

Venice was under siege when Austria sent some 200 incendiary balloons toward it. The wind changed after launch, so most missed and some drifted back over the attackers' own lines.

The Kettering Bug, a pilotless biplane built in 1918 to strike distant ground targets, was a forerunner of which weapon?

The cruise missile owes its idea to the Bug, which could strike targets 75 miles away at 50 mph. It was never used in combat: only about 45 had been built by the time the war ended.