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Stratosphere Airship Delivers Mobile Broadband
12 Sep
Summary
- An airship successfully provided mobile broadband from Earth's stratosphere.
- The 30-day flight tested connectivity for emergency response scenarios.
- A single airship could replace hundreds of terrestrial cell towers.
An innovative silver airship recently concluded a 30-day stratospheric flight, successfully delivering mobile broadband connectivity to cellphones. Sceye's Service Test 1 (ST1) mission, which began on August 9, undertook a trans-Pacific journey from New Mexico to Japan and back. During its operation, the airship spent a week over Japan testing its capacity to provide high-speed connections from the stratosphere, focusing on emergency and disaster response.
Sceye's High Altitude Platform Systems are designed to function as aerial cell towers, utilizing helium for buoyancy and solar cells for power. The ST1 vehicle traveled 18,641 miles (30,000 kilometers) before returning to New Mexico on September 5. It successfully demonstrated mobile broadband services, including text, voice, internet access, and video streaming.
The SceyeCell technology, an airborne cellular network antenna, aims to compete with low-Earth orbit satellites by offering wide-area coverage at a lower operational cost. Sceye posits that the stratosphere provides an ideal altitude for extensive reach and high-capacity connectivity. A single airship, operating similar to a geostationary satellite but much closer to Earth, could cover the area of approximately 500 terrestrial towers.
