How to Use unpiloted in a Sentence
unpiloted
adjective-
By that point, one or both companies will have had to complete a successful unpiloted moon landing.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 9 June 2026
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The designers said the new design could be converted to an unpiloted version and a two-seat model.
—Fox News, 21 July 2021
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Indian officials plan more tests of the launch abort system next year, along with an unpiloted Gaganyaan mission into orbit.
—Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 27 Oct. 2023
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Then SpaceX plans to fly an unpiloted demonstration mission to land Starship on the Moon, ahead of the first crew flight.
—Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 27 Oct. 2023
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Drones are any type of unpiloted aircraft or unmanned aerial vehicle, where there is no physical human on board and can be controlled remotely.
—Alex Perry, The Enquirer, 17 Dec. 2024
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The billionaire entrepreneur made history by being part of the first unpiloted suborbital flight with an all-civilian crew.
—NBC News, 20 July 2021
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An unpiloted test flight in December 2019 failed to reach the space station, aborted its mission, and came home early.
—Stephen Clark, ArsTechnica, 1 July 2026
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These missions follow Artemis I, a successful unpiloted test flight in 2022.
—Stephen Clark, ArsTechnica, 25 July 2025
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The company plans a second unpiloted test flight in a couple months; the first one suffered so many software problems that the Starliner capsule failed to reach the space station.
—Marcia Dunn, The Christian Science Monitor, 9 Nov. 2020
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The housings were mounted on unpiloted aerial vehicles for a demonstration of a fully airborne 5G network.
—Steven Walker, IEEE Spectrum, 11 Nov. 2021
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The unpiloted New Shepard capsule has space for six passengers who each have a window seat, looking out of some of the largest windows of any operational spacecraft.
—Jennifer Earl, Analisa Novak, CBS News, 14 Apr. 2025
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In unpiloted mode, Shenzhou-22 docked with the front port of China's Tiangong space station's Tianhe core module.
—Leonard David, Space.com, 24 Feb. 2026
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Boeing has flown two unpiloted Starliner test flights using the same type of autonomous reentry and landing operations.
—Stephen Clark, Ars Technica, 30 Aug. 2024
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Blue Origin has launched 32 space tourists to date, including Bezos, along with multiple unpiloted cargo missions.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 26 Jan. 2024
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On Tuesday, Bezos plans to be part of a four-person crew on an unpiloted spacecraft built by Blue Origin that will take an 11-minute ride to the edge of space.
—Alison Kosik, CNN, 15 July 2021
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Both companies must launch a successful unpiloted moon landing mission before the agency will attempt to land astronauts in 2028.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 22 May 2026
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The rocket engine problem stalled plans to launch the SLS rocket and its unpiloted Orion spacecraft on an ambitious 42-day test flight around the moon.
—Tariq Malik, Scientific American, 29 Aug. 2022
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The heat shield protecting the Orion capsule during an unpiloted test flight in 2022 was seriously damaged during reentry.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 30 Mar. 2026
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The flight will mark the first time astronauts have flown atop an SLS rocket and aboard an Orion crew capsule after a single unpiloted test flight in 2022.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 19 Mar. 2026
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Before its unpiloted maiden flight in 2022, multiple fueling tests were required to address a variety of propellant leaks and other issues.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 30 Jan. 2026
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During the ramp up to the rocket's maiden flight in 2022, engineers ran into multiple propellant leaks and other problems that ended up delaying an unpiloted test flight by more than six months.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 3 Feb. 2026
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SpaceX completed an unpiloted test flight of its own Crew Dragon spacecraft in 2019 and successfully flew two astronauts to the space station the following year.
—Denise Chow, NBC News, 19 May 2022
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Joby, one of the most advanced of the startups, provided a stark reminder of this fact when it was disclosed on 16 February that one of its unpiloted prototypes crashed during a test flight in a remote part of California.
—Glenn Zorpette, IEEE Spectrum, 22 Feb. 2022
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SpaceX's huge Starship rocket, the most powerful ever built, blasted off on an unpiloted maiden flight Thursday and successfully flew for more than two minutes before tumbling out of control and exploding in a cloud of flaming debris.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 20 Apr. 2023
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Processors distributed among the piloted and unpiloted aircraft churn through the data, and artificial-intelligence (AI) algorithms locate the targets and identify the weapons in the live video feed being viewed by the commanders.
—Steven Walker, IEEE Spectrum, 11 Nov. 2021
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The latest delay was a familiar setback for the hard-luck Starliner, which has suffered a steady stream of frustrating complications since an initial unpiloted test flight in 2019 was derailed by software problems and communications glitches.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 21 May 2024
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The second official launch, also unpiloted, came in May 2022 and was a success, Boeing said at the time, with the Starliner reaching and docking at the space station and safely returning and landing back on Earth.
—Leah Sarnoff, ABC News, 6 May 2024
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Professional unpiloted aerial vehicles (UAVs) are already instrumental in conservation efforts and engineering projects, but even personal use drones do more than recording cool aerial shots of your vacation.
—Andrew Paul, Popular Science, 22 May 2025
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The company tentatively plans to launch a prototype Blue Moon lander on an unpiloted test flight late this summer or early fall, followed by one and possibly two launches of Amazon LEO internet satellites before the end of the year.
—William Harwood, CBS News, 19 Apr. 2026
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According to Sierra Space—the division of the Sierra Nevada Corporation that now operates the spacecraft—an unpiloted version of Dream Chaser had been slated to resupply the ISS at least seven times, using a detachable module to deliver up to six tons of cargo.
—Tom Metcalfe, Scientific American, 13 Apr. 2026
Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'unpiloted.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.
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