Press Launch
Sceye, a U.S. aerospace and materials science firm specializing in Excessive-Altitude Platform Techniques (HAPS) for telecommunications and real-time environmental monitoring, right this moment introduced the profitable trans-Pacific flight of its Service Take a look at 1 (ST1) mission from New Mexico to Japan. Touring greater than 15,000 km via the stratosphere in 13 days, upon arrival over Japan, ST1 demonstrated cellular broadband connectivity to unmodified units via SoftBank Corp.’s core community and HAPS-based edge computing and communication with drones to help the event of a 3D communications community.
Carried out in partnership with SoftBank Corp., a number one operator of telecommunications and IT companies in Japan and globally, ST1 marks Sceye’s first flight to Asia and a groundbreaking milestone in direction of the business deployment of HAPS as stratospheric infrastructure.
“This flight marks a defining second for Sceye and for the business potential of HAPS,” mentioned Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, Founder and CEO of Sceye. “Flying from the US to Japan demonstrates the efficiency required to make the stratosphere a viable layer of infrastructure and understand the way forward for AI, edge computing, and 6G. Along with SoftBank, we’re shifting past proving the expertise to demonstrating how Sceye can complement and lengthen current networks and ship persistent connectivity at scale.”
The stratosphere provides the optimum vantage level: It’s shut sufficient to Earth for high-capacity connectivity and statement, but the altitude is excessive sufficient for wide-area attain. Importantly, the stratosphere provides space-like situations with out the price of being in area and the disadvantages of being in orbit. Sceye’s HAPS keep altitude and their space of operation within the stratosphere via consecutive day and night time cycles, working like geostationary satellites, just one,800 instances nearer to Earth and at a fraction of the associated fee.
In 2025, SoftBank Corp. invested in Sceye’s HAPS-based stratospheric infrastructure as a scalable resolution to enrich terrestrial towers and satellite tv for pc constellations. The strategic partnership advances a shared imaginative and prescient for HAPS and Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) as transformative infrastructure that may develop connectivity, help communications throughout disasters, and allow future functions throughout AI, IoT, aerial communications, edge computing, and 6G.
ST1 carried SceyeCELL, a first-of-its-kind “cell tower within the sky” designed to ship wide-area cellular broadband instantly to straightforward units from the stratosphere. When deployed at full scale, one Sceye HAPS is designed to cowl the equal space of roughly 500 terrestrial towers. In the course of the ST1 mission, Sceye and SoftBank demonstrated cellular broadband from the stratosphere, together with textual content messaging, voice calls, web entry, and video streaming. Testing additionally included emergency calls, utilizing an emergency alert messaging system designed for large-scale disasters, and communications with drones.
Sceye’s ST1 mission launched on August 9, 2026 at 7:00 AM MDT from New Mexico. Extra notable mission attributes embrace:
-
Traveled greater than 15,000 km throughout the Pacific to Japan in 13 days
-
Operated inside Japanese managed air area for over 7 days
-
Remained repeatedly inside its space of operation for an prolonged interval, attaining a station-seeking radius as little as 5 km
-
Operated at roughly 16.5 km in altitude whereas finishing telecommunications, drone, and emergency communications
-
Confirmed communications efficiency equal to that of terrestrial networks whereas decreasing radio interference with ground-based base stations
-
By way of a server put in on the HAPS, Sceye and SoftBank carried out information processing instantly on the platform, demonstrating common round-trip processing response time of 68 milliseconds, decreasing communications latency by over 40% in contrast with internet-based cloud processing. This marks the world’s first profitable check by which a cellular core community and an internet server for processing had been put in on a HAPS, enabling response processing to be carried out totally onboard the HAPS and the outcomes to be relayed again to smartphones.
ST1 stays in flight, returning in direction of america over the Pacific Ocean on the time of this announcement.
“SoftBank goals to construct next-generation communications infrastructure that seamlessly connects the bottom, the sky, and area. The truth that Sceye’s HAPS reached Japan from america and efficiently supplied Japan’s first trial companies from the stratosphere in Japan’s airspace marks an essential step towards the commercialization of HAPS, which is on the core of this imaginative and prescient,” mentioned Junichi Miyakawa, President & CEO of SoftBank Corp. “By combining the HAPS flight and operational applied sciences that Sceye has developed with SoftBank’s communications applied sciences, we’ve got gained confidence to comprehend a three-dimensional communications community using HAPS. Going ahead, in collaboration with Sceye, we’ll proceed to combine a variety of applied sciences, together with communications and AI, to develop HAPS into a brand new type of social infrastructure.”
This flight builds on Sceye’s Endurance Program, accomplished earlier this 12 months, when its SE2 HAPS traveled greater than 10,000 km within the stratosphere from New Mexico to the coast of Brazil the place it stayed over its space of operation for a number of days to check long-duration efficiency in preparation for the Service Take a look at Program, the primary of which flew to Japan.
Additionally within the information
Shared Rural Community rollout extends to UK nationwide parks with over 150 4G masts reside
Vodafone touts newest try and bridge the UK’s digital divide
Virgin Media O2 cuts 5,200 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions
