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. Then, a little past six o'clock, a truck taxied down the runway, pulling Aquila on a massive metal dolly stretched out behind it.

Aquila is the flying drone Zuckerberg and company are designing to provide Internet access in remote parts of the world. It's made of carbon fiber, and it tops the wingspan of a 737. As the truck reached full speed, the drone's on-board autopilot computer clipped the straps that held the aircraft to the dolly, and Aquila rose into the sky.