Thales Alenia Space's Stratobus stratospheric airship passes a new development milestone

Thales Alenia Space, the joint company between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), has carried out a demonstration flight designed to validate the emergency recovery system for the Stratobus stratospheric airship, as part of the European Commission’s HEMERA 2020 project.

Stratobus is an autonomous airship 140 meters long, operating in the stratosphere at an altitude of 20 kilometers, which means that it belongs to the HAPS [High Altitude Platform System] family. It features a non-rigid envelope whose shape is maintained by helium at a higher pressure than the surrounding atmosphere. The demonstration flight of an open stratospheric balloon was carried out on September 11 at Kiruna, Sweden, and was designed to test the airship’s emergency recovery capacity. The test entailed cutting the envelope at an altitude of 20 kilometers, using a digital-pyrotechnic system, to trigger the airship’s controlled descent to the ground.

Conducted by the Swedish Space Corporation, this 8-hour test flight was a resounding success, as it validated the airship’s emergency recovery concept. A live video feed confirmed the system’s effectiveness, in particular communications links with the ground, the command and control electronics, the digital-pyrotechnic system and its initiators, the pyrotechnic actuator and all instrumentation.

“We would like to thank the Swedish Space Corporation and all our partners for their contributions to this successful demonstration,” said Yannick Combet, Stratobus Program Manager at Thales Alenia Space. “It’s always very impressive to see this kind of flight with an open stratospheric ‘balloon’, especially when it’s based on innovative technologies like the activation of a digital-pyrotechnic system operating in a severe environment. Furthermore, this demonstration is a key step along the path to flight authorization for future reduced scale Stratobus demonstrators, followed by the certification of flight models.”

Providing permanent regional coverage, Stratobus is a perfect complement to satellite systems. It can carry payloads to perform a number of vital missions, including border surveillance, monitoring of high-value sites on land or at sea (video monitoring of offshore platforms, etc.), defense and security (the fight against terrorism and drug trafficking, etc.), environmental monitoring (forest fires, beach erosion, pollution, etc.) and telecommunications (internet, 5G).