A Helium-Filled Cell Tower for the Stratosphere – Video

Behind me is a high altitude platform system or haps made by sky. This thing is filled with helium and it’s designed to float up into the stratosphere and provide earth observation and internet access to underserved communities. This hangar is never open to the public so we’re bringing you an exclusive behind the scenes peak as they get ready for launch day. Let’s check it out. The hangar is located in Roswell, New Mexico, which has a history of alien sightings, a fitting location for such otherworldly looking technology to learn more about what this habs can do, how it works and what to expect. On launch day, we spoke to Sky’s founder and CEO. As long as you don’t call us an airship or a blimp, we’re good sky aims to do work commonly reserved for satellites and drones by using the structure of a balloon. Unlike drones, we stay up and unlike low earth over satellites, we stay over the same area while they’re passing by. You can think of sky’s haps as something that could do the work of the geostationary satellite from a position that’s 1800 times closer to the surface of the earth offering significant advantages for remote communities. Terrestrial internet infrastructure is often lacking a coverage gap which satellite internet companies like Starlink and HughesNet have hoped to bridge. However, satellite internet companies generally require a satellite dish in order to access their services. Whereas sky says it will be capable of beaming internet directly to users devices. No additional hardware required. In addition to providing a new type of internet infrastructure, sky’s haps can also make detailed observations of earth monitoring for things like wildfires or emissions and gas leaks. We did that on our last flight where we did the first ever methane leak monitoring from the stratosphere. We parked over the Texas New Mexico border and identified more than a handful of super. We handed that data over to EPA the subject of earth observation also reminded me of the media frenzy around the high altitude Chinese balloon that was shot down by the US Air Force. Last year. I asked if reconnaissance work was possibly in sky’s future reconnaissance flights. Others can do that. The haps is filled with helium, meaning it floats up to its destination rather than needing to take a ride on a rocket. We have solar power on the top of the aircraft. About 80% of that powers our ability to station keep and be safe in the stratosphere and 20% of that powers our payload haps have been in development for about 20 years with some designs like the Airbus Zephyr or Helios prototype opting for a plane like design fitted with solar panels. We don’t use power to stay up. Our lifting gas is doing that. And as a result, the heavier than air or the plane like platform consumes a lot more power. That is the massive difference, the ability to stay up and stay over an area of operation. Google’s project loon also attempted to provide internet access via high altitude balloon but the company shut down in 2021 due to a reported lack of profitability. A more traditional balloon cannot really control where it’s going. And that’s not helpful if you want to service a specific region with mobile broadband, the reflective service material on the outside of the sky halfs is designed to maintain the aircraft’s shape and internal pressure through the different flight conditions. It will experience as it ascends and remains in place day after day inside a small control center just outside the hangar. We spoke with Sky’s chief of mission operations to learn about the big launch which went down a week after our visit. Launch day starts very early. In fact, it’s even the night before actual launch we get in late in the evening, 1011 o’clock, we get the vehicle ready. So that involves all the last final mission preparations, putting helium inside the vehicle will take hours because the vehicle is so big. When the weather looks like we’re go for lunch, we open the hangar doors and we walk out the habs and we really sky told us that some parts of the habs flight system have been made autonomous, like its ability to respond to changing conditions during its ascent. While others like its ability to stay in position once it reaches its target altitude are in the process of being automated but are human assisted. For now when we launch, we pitch our nose to vertical and we look like a rocket almost. And so all of that helium tends to float to the very top or to the nose of the ship. And this gives us the best stability. And then when we reach our flow altitude, we’ll actually kind of pitch over to a horizontal nose attitude. And that’s when we can start maneuvering and perform any type of either test points or mission objectives. After a successful flight to the stratosphere, the hats descended by letting helium out and returning to earth sky says its next phase of flight tests will be focused on endurance. The goal is over a year when a particular haps is reaching its end of life service, we would just be sending up another one to replace it, but we would always have that continuous presence or that persistence in the stratosphere. It’s hard to grasp the size of this thing from the ground. Luckily, there were other options available to me. All right, as you can see, I got my harness on, we’re gonna hop into this crane and get an aerial view of this haps before it goes up and gets an aerial view of us. Let’s go. That’s about max. That, that’s perfect. No, no, no, I’m good. So here we’re up at 80 ft. You can see just how massive this thing is for more. What the future videos subscribe to CNET. I’m your host, Jess Ele. Thanks so much for watching.