Down to −50 °C: proving the drone dock at Sheffield's LVV
Before trusting an autonomous drone dock to a remote cold site, we took it to the University of Sheffield’s environmental chamber and ran it down to −50 °C — mapping its heating power, recovery time, and the temperature envelope it can still launch in.
A drone-in-a-box for the Greenland ice sheet: GAMB2LE and AURORA
GAMB2LE puts an advanced atmospheric observatory — AURORA — on the Greenland ice sheet. Menapia is building the arctic-hardened drone-in-a-box that flies routine atmospheric profiles from it, beating propeller icing and running remotely from the UK.
742 flights, one Icelandic field, no pilot on site
In an extended Iceland trial, a Menapia drone flew 742 automated profiles from a weatherproof dock — launching, profiling, and swapping its own battery with no pilot on site, more than half of the flights reaching above the boundary layer.
Flying off the back of a ship: STRINQS in the tropical Atlantic
Four Menapia quadcopters went to sea in 2024, flying simultaneous, coordinated atmospheric profiles from a research vessel in the mid-Atlantic for TU Delft’s STRINQS campaign — including the first three-drone coordinated hexagon we know of from a moving ship.