The overall performance of a solar-powered aircraft predominantly depends upon the efficiency of the collection and utilization of solar energy. the collection of solar power largely depends upon the orientation of solar cells with respect to the incidental solar rays, which in turn, depends upon the attitude of the aircraft. reducing the angle between the normal of the wing and the direct solar rays can increase the collection of solar energy, but changing the attitude of the aircraft demands more power for a flight due to increased drag. thus, there is always a trade-off between power gain due to aircraft attitude and solar power collection. when the aircraft is banked towards the sun, the lift vector changes and only the cosine component of the lift balances the weight of the aircraft and the sine component introduces a sideslip. for a banked and straight flight, the sideslip is a major source of drag resulting in larger power demand. if the aircraft is banked towards the sun without introducing sideslip, the extra power demand due to banking can be reduced significantly and this can help to collect more solar energy depending upon the position of the sun (azimuth and elevation) and geographical location (latitude and longitude). to achieve the appropriate attitude, a novel control surface “auxiron” is proposed and incorporated in the design. with the auxiron, an aircraft can fly in a straight path with a roll angle and without a sideslip angle, which is not possible in conventional aircraft design. the auxiron enables an aircraft to achieve an energy optimal attitude with less drag than that of conventional design. a controller is designed for the new configuration with modified dynamics of the aircraft using the finite-time sliding-mode approach. the novel design features, methods and energy management techniques used in the maraal would pave the way for the enhancement of the endurance of a solar uav. longer endurance of a solar-powered aircraft is helpful in designing pseudo-satellite with a relatively lower cost which is easy to deploy and capable of providing services like search and rescue missions, disaster relief, environmental monitoring, agricultural survey, target applications, communications nodes, earth observation and positioning.