A new generation of stratospheric balloons and high-altitude unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) could soon connect the world’s unconnected to high-speed Internet at a fraction of the prices demanded by operators of satellite mega-constellations like SpaceX’s Starlink.
High Altitude Platform Stations, or HAPS, have been around for some time, but the technology hasn’t fully taken off yet. Google spent 10 years trying to develop balloons that would float in the stratosphere over remote rural areas and beam Internet to residents, but abandoned that project, called Salaryin 2021, concluding that it cannot be made sustainable.
Richard Deakin, chief executive of World Mobile Stratospheric, said HAPS has failed so far because it could not support the power-hungry antennas needed to transmit high-bandwidth Internet across vast stretches of land. Previously tested high-altitude balloons and airships relied on photovoltaics to generate power, which only provides “a couple hundred watts,” according to Deakin.
He said his company’s HAPS, an autonomous aircraft called the Stratomast, will be powered by liquid hydrogen, allowing it to not only float for six days at an altitude of 60,000 feet (18 km), but also generate enough electricity to support a 10-by-10-foot (3-by-3-meter) phased array antenna that could connect 500,000 users in Land at the same time. After six days, a new plane would arrive to take over the service while the first one returned to the base to refuel.
Deakin says users will get 200 megabits per second (Mbps) of connectivity directly to their smartphones from Stratomast. That would be a big improvement over Star LinkThe current direct-to-device offer 17 Mbps, which is currently only capable of supporting emergency text messages. just a moment AST Mobile Spacewhich is building a constellation of giant orbital antennas to beam Internet directly to smartphone devices, can only support about 21 Mbps.
“When the Stratomast is flying, all these old satellites will be in museums,” Deakin said.
The 4 metric ton (4.4 ton) Stratomast aircraft, made of lightweight carbon fiber, has a wingspan of 56 m (184 ft), equivalent to that of a 120 metric ton (132 ton) Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft. A single Stratomast will cover an area of 6,000 square miles (15,000 square kilometers). Such a wide reach means the whole of Scotland could be covered with just nine Stratomast platforms, Deakin said. World Mobile Stratospheric estimates that the cost of running such a system would be around £40 million (US$52 million) a year, allowing the company to provide 200 Mbps of internet connectivity to Scotland’s 5.5 million people at a cost of around 60 pence per person per month.
“That’s enough for television, computer broadband, everything…” Gregory Gottlieb, head of aerial platforms at World Mobile, told Space.com.
By comparison, the cheapest Starlink subscription, which only covers areas with low demand, currently costs $40 a month. And price is just one of the drawbacks of LEO satellite Internet. To be able to connect to Starlink satellitesUsers need dedicated terminals. Although Starlink downlink speeds reach up to 250 Mbps, bandwidth dilutes as the number of users grows. For example, troops on the front line in eastern Ukraine complain that Starlink bandwidth limits the use of ground robotssince most terminals only obtain about 10 Mbps.
“There really is no satellite constellation that can serve more than one person per square kilometer [0.4 square miles]”Mikkel Frandsen, founder and CEO of another HAPS developer, Sceye, based in New Mexico, told Space.com. “That’s kind of the high end.”
Sceye, founded in 2014, has developed a solar-powered airship-like HAPS, which has already successfully completed several test flights. In August last year, the Sceye aircraft became the first stratospheric platform to successfully survive a night in the stratosphere without sinking after sunset and remaining in the required position above a fixed point on Earth. According to Frandsen, the drift problem and difficulties with maintaining position were among the problems that led to the failure of the Google Loon project.
In June, Sceye received a “strategic investment” from Japanese telecommunications operator SoftBank, which hopes the technology will allow it to provide next-generation connectivity to users even in the most underserved areas. Sceye also recently won a NASA contract to host Earth observation payloads.
Frandsen said Sceye does not want to compete with satellite Internet providers, but believes mega-constellations, even when fully deployed, will not be able to meet the global need for connectivity.
“All satellite constellations, when combined, will do nothing but [make] “This will mean a small dent in global demand for connectivity,” he said. “They’re going to do good business at the prices they’re charging, but they’re not going to serve billions of people.” The space is not so scalable. “They are going to serve millions of people.”
LEO satellite megaconstellations such as SpaceXThe Starlink orbit is located a few hundred kilometers above the Earth’s surface. Over the past five years, they have replaced distant geostationary satellites, which orbit 35,786 kilometers (22,236 miles) above Earth, as the dominant technology for providing Internet connectivity from space. But the growth in the number of satellites worries space sustainability experts. The more objects hurtle around the planet, the greater the risk of collisions that could contaminate near-Earth space with thousands of dangerous fragments. In addition, atmospheric physicists are concerned about the increasing amount of burnt metal in the atmosphere during satellite re-entries.
“HAPS is a really interesting area because I think in many ways it covers the best of terrestrial and satellite systems – high altitude systems without the drawbacks,” Deakin said.
Gottlieb said HAPS could provide a convenient, flexible and easily replaceable alternative to satellite Internet in times of rising geopolitical tensions.
“There is a view that within 24 hours of any major conflict, low-Earth orbit would be unusable for military purposes,” Gottlieb said. “We can deploy aircraft in a very short time. We can be agile in terms of the spectrum we are using and all kinds of different boxes that can go to our platforms.”
Deakin’s team has been developing Stratomast since 2019 as part of a collaboration with German telecommunications provider Deutsche Telecom. During tests carried out in Germany and Saudi Arabia, they demonstrated the operation of their novel antenna technology.
Earlier this year, the company was acquired by American telecommunications provider World Mobile. The company recently partnered with Indonesian telecommunications provider Protelindo to get Stratomast off the ground. The association plans to conduct flight tests with its antenna at lower altitudes next summer and hopes to begin stratospheric test flights in 2027.
Meanwhile, Sceye is working to increase the endurance of its airship and hopes to begin commercial service in 2027.
