Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Well, yes, it's a plane, actually.

With the graceful flight of hawks and eagles in mind, NASA aerospace engineer Michael Allen hand-launched a lightweight motorized model sailplane over the Southern California desert recently, hoping it would catch plumes of rising air called thermals.

It did just that, not once but numerous times - without human intervention - during a series of research flights at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center, validating his premise that using thermal lift could significantly extend the range and endurance of small unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) without a corresponding increase in fuel requirements.

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