This week’s news roundup looks at a drone partly powered by solar, a new UTM software that lends a helping hand to first responders, and more anxiety around drone delivery in suburban areas.

V-TOL Aerospace’s Pegasus Flies Nearly Two Hours on Next-Gen Batteries and Solar

Australian drone maker V-TOL Aerospace has pushed its Pegasus Mk.I a step closer to genuine long-endurance flight. The sub-25kg fixed-wing aircraft recently stayed aloft for almost two hours and covered more than 75 km, running on lithium sulfur batteries from Li-S Energy and perovskite solar panels from Halocell. The flights, flown in Queensland under an Emerging Aviation Technology Partnerships grant, used a single Li-S battery pack and a first-generation Halocell solar array. A proprietary power management system ties it together, switching between powertrain configurations mid-flight and scavenging energy from the solar panels when it can.

The pitch goes beyond range. Compared with liquid-fuel aircraft, the electric Pegasus is nearly inaudible at close-to-mid range, a quality that opens the door to quieter, less intrusive missions in commercial and public spaces. The company has set its sights on eight hours of endurance next, then beyond 24, aiming to build a long-range workhorse for mapping and surveillance in agriculture, utilities and environmental monitoring. Two hours is a modest start against those targets, but it’s a credible proof of concept for a power stack that could change what small unmanned aircraft are able to do.

ANRA Launches VISTA to Show Drone Pilots Who Else Is in the Air

As low-altitude skies fill with delivery drones, first-responder aircraft and inspection missions, ANRA Technologies is betting that operators mostly need a better view of their neighbors. The company’s new VISTA application pulls flight intent and reported positions from UTM services and displays them in a visual interface, giving public safety agencies and enterprise drone programs a clearer picture of nearby traffic before and during a mission. It is strictly receive-only: it doesn’t connect aircraft to UTM or file flight plans, so organizations can use it without swapping out aircraft, flight software or existing procedures.

The practical appeal is easiest to see in the field. Drone-as-first-responder teams can spot other operations near an emergency scene, while utilities and infrastructure crews gain visibility around routine inspections and maintenance flights, often involving aircraft run by other organizations. ANRA says its UTM platform now supports roughly one drone mission every 15 seconds during daytime hours, and more than 20 organizations, mostly DFR programs, already use its visualization tools. VISTA is less a new system than a new lens on an existing one, but as shared airspace gets busier, a simple way to see who else is flying may prove one of the more useful additions.

Massachusetts Lawmakers Press FAA for New Review of Amazon’s Westborough Drone Hub

Four Massachusetts Democrats, Senators Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren and Representatives Jim McGovern and Lori Trahan, are asking the FAA to take a second look before Amazon Prime Air puts a drone delivery hub in Westborough, about 30 miles west of Boston. In a letter to FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford, they argue that residents’ worries about noise, health and safety, and privacy deserve a fresh environmental review. The FAA says it will respond to the lawmakers directly, and Amazon has yet to comment.

The request lands in the middle of a broader fight over how closely drone delivery should be scrutinized. In July, the agency issued a sweeping environmental review that lets qualifying operators launch fleets without a site-specific analysis, a shortcut that 15 states, including Massachusetts, are now challenging in court. The review’s noise modeling assumed about 1,150 average deliveries from a single hub, with drones flying below 400 feet. Delivery flights are already routine in states such as California, Texas and Florida under the waiver process, so Westborough may become an early test of whether local objections can slow a regulatory path designed to speed things up.