Facebook is shutting down its Aquila internet drone project

Facebook announced today that it's shutting down its Aquila internet drone project after four years. The news was tucked away in a blog post titled "High altitude connectivity: The next chapter," penned by Yael Maguire, a director of engineering at Facebook.

Aquila was Facebook's bold stratosphere internet project that imagined high-flying drones running partially on solar power that could remain in flight for long periods of time and beam down LTE service to remote parts of the world. In broad terms, Aquila was one of many ways, alongside Internet.org and other initiatives, that Facebook is trying to help the developing world and remote parts of Earth get online, so that they too can become Facebook users.

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