Aircraft
Airbus Launches Program to Probe Hydrogen Power Contrails
Airbus has launched the Blue Condor project, using a hydrogen-powered glider to study the composition of hydrogen-generated contrails.
Airbus Blue Condor. (Photo: Airbus)
Airbus Blue Condor. (Photo: Airbus)

In the next step of its ZEROe project to develop the world’s first zero-emission commercial aircraft by 2035, Airbus launched at the Farnborough International Airshow on Wednesday the Blue Condor project, a flight test program to study the composition of contrails produced by a hydrogen combustion engine. Though hydrogen emits no CO2 when burned, “hydrogen combustion does produce contrails,” said Sandra Bour Schaeffer, CEO of Airbus subsidiary UpNext. “This is what we want to isolate and study, to understand precisely the effect of hydrogen burn, in order to make the right choices on the path toward net-zero.”


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