China just flew a 130-foot, solar-powered drone designed to stay in the air for months

For militaries, tech like this provides an excellent platform for surveillance missions against military and terrorist targets. It can utilize its high flight ceiling to maintain line-of-sight contact with over 400,000 square miles of ground and water. For both militaries and tech firms, covering so much territory makes it an excellent data relay and communications node. This will allow the drone to replace or back up satellite communications, maintain coverage between distant aircraft and ships, or even provide broadband to rural Chinese households. While conversations around drone usage are often limited to their roles as potential missile-toting killers and parcel-delivering quadcopters, some of the most important drones of the future may be those like the Caihong X and Helios Prototype, unseen and high up, gathering data day in and day out.