By August, a giant silver sphere will cross the dry air of the American Southwest and cross the Pacific to reach the shores of Japan. There, the 200-foot-long craft, built by New Mexico-based Sceye , will park about 11 miles above the ocean’s surface, in a thin layer known as the stratosphere. It will then use a custom-built antenna to boost Softbank ’s 5G network , in a test that will involve sending data directly to devices.
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Sceye (pronounced “sky”) is one of several companies building a class of flying craft called HAPS, or high-altitude platform stations or systems. Such a platform could be an airplane or a balloon or an elongated craft filled with helium and equipped with solar panels. HAPS companies, including Airbus subsidiary Aalto, envision serving a variety of lofty purposes, such as providing internet service to disaster areas and observing the Earth’s surface.
The stratosphere is a good place to be if you want to cover a large area. It’s also much closer to the ground than satellites in low orbit, which means it takes much less energy to send a signal. “What we end up offering is space-like conditions, without the cost of going to space and without the complexity of orbit,” says Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, CEO and founder of Sceye.
HAPS technology offers significant potential for enhancing telecommunications infrastructure. Due to their proximity to Earth, airborne platforms can provide more reliable and faster connections compared to traditional satellites. This is especially important in cases of natural disasters, where ground-based infrastructure may have been damaged, making communication difficult.
HAPS can take on the role of temporary communication towers, ensuring that affected areas remain connected to the rest of the world.
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But staying in the stratosphere is no easy feat. Sceye’s aircraft, Frandsen says, must be light enough to stay airborne, but also strong enough to carry the necessary systems. It must absorb and store enough solar energy during the day to provide 24-hour power to an electric fan that can move the HAPS back into position when winds displace it—something it demonstrated in a test flight in 2024.
Since then, Sceye has been preparing for its big test in Japan. In the flight pictured here from the spring, for example, the craft stayed in the air for 12 days as it flew toward the coast of Brazil and spent more than 88 hours “parked” at various locations. Ultimately, the company expects its platform could help satellite operators better serve densely populated areas.
The use of HAPS is not limited to telecommunications. These platforms can also be used for environmental monitoring, collecting data on air pollution, weather conditions and other environmental parameters. This can provide valuable information for understanding and addressing climate change.
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One day, says Frandsen, seeing a HAPS could be as common as seeing ships in port or trains on the tracks. The technology promises to revolutionize the delivery of services from the sky, offering new possibilities for communication, monitoring and data analysis. As technology advances and costs decrease, flying platforms could become a common sight in the sky, offering solutions to problems that were previously considered insoluble.
