Facebook's Giant Internet-Beaming Drone Finally Takes Flight

As the sun rose over the Sonora Desert in late June, Mark Zuckerberg stood beside a runway not far from the Mexican border. Next to him stood Facebook vice president of engineering Jay Parikh and a few other colleagues, all eyes on the strip of asphalt that stretched toward the horizon. They had arrived a little before dawn, and they were the latecomers. A team of Facebook technicians began prepping the launch at midnight the day before. Among them was Martin Gomez, who sat inside a trailer at the other end of this Army airfield near Yuma, Arizona, taking the crew through its "go"-"no go" checklist.