On Monday evening, TechCrunch caught wind of a deal in progress between Facebook and Titan Aerospace, an unmanned aircraft startup that is building what it calls “atmospheric satellites.” These "satellites" are solar-powered drones designed by Titan to be capable of flying for up to five years without landing, and they will operate at altitudes above commercial airspace. This will allow them to act as low-cost communications relays for wireless networks.

News of the deal was allegedly leaked by someone outside the company who had what TechCrunch described in an update as “unauthorized access” to the information. TechCrunch spoke with Titan Aerospace board member Asher Delung, who confirmed that discussions are indeed ongoing.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook is acquiring Titan for about $60 million—a fraction of what Facebook just spent on WhatsApp. But Titan’s technology is still in development, and it doesn’t expect its first commercial drone to fly until 2015. The company had originally intended to start delivering aircraft this year, and it had customer reservations for the first three of its aircraft, called the Solara 50, as of last August. The Solara 50, sporting a 50-foot wingspan covered with photovoltaic cells, can carry 70 pounds of equipment to the upper atmosphere and generate 7 kilowatts of power during daylight hours.

However, according to TechCrunch’s source, Facebook wants the company primarily for its second-generation drone, the Solara 60—a larger version of the aircraft that can carry a payload of up to 250 pounds up to altitudes between 60,000 and 70,000 feet. Facebook is reportedly looking for Titan to build 11,000 of the drones—enough to create an airborne communications relay system that could cover over 10 million square miles, roughly the size of Africa.

Facebook’s interest in Titan’s high-flying robotic aircraft is apparently centered on the social networking giant’s involvement in Internet.org, the nonprofit effort to make Internet access affordable to people around the world. The drones would give the effort a capability similar to that sought by Google's Project Loon, a balloon-based airborne Internet relay system. While drones are obviously more expensive than balloons, the Solara drones can stay airborne longer and can be maneuvered in response to weather conditions and emergencies.

Titan has already done some work in this space as part of the Internet Africa Project, in which it has teamed with nonprofits to develop an airborne Internet for the continent. Titan also had planned to provide surveillance drones for the Rhino Sentinel Project, an effort to monitor endangered South African rhino populations from poachers. Given the wide range of potential applications of Titan’s drones—from mapping to emergency response to military communications and intelligence collection—it’s unlikely Facebook will keep Titan’s products all to itself.