The stratospheric platform of the American company Sceye has completed a record transpacific flight, covering almost 30,000 kilometers from New Mexico to Japan and back to the USA, Interesting Engineering wrote.
During the Service Test 1 (ST1) mission, the company tested the technology of direct cellular communication with standard smartphones, calculations performed on the platform and interaction with drones.
The platform launched on August 9, 2026 and reached Japan 13 days later. The tests were conducted jointly with the Japanese telecommunications company SoftBank. In particular, Sceye demonstrated mobile broadband for ordinary devices using SoftBank's core network, meaning without the need to install special hardware on smartphones or other devices.
For this, the platform carried SceyeCELL, a system that the company calls "a cellular tower in the sky". According to Sceye's calculations, one full-scale stratospheric platform can provide a coverage area comparable to about 500 land-based towers.
During the flight, the emergency call and notification system, which is designed to be used in large-scale emergency situations, as well as communication with drones, were also tested. These technologies are considered as one of the options for creating a three-dimensional communication network.
Calculations performed directly on the platform have become a separate direction of tests. A server was installed on HAPS, on which Sceye and SoftBank processed the data before transmitting it to users. The average request processing time from sending to reply and back was 68 milliseconds. According to the company, that's more than 40 percent less latency compared to processing through Internet-cloud services.
Sceye noted that this test is the first successful case when a mobile base network and a web server for data processing were installed simultaneously on a stratospheric platform. As a result, the calculations were performed directly on HAPS, and the ready data was transferred back to the smartphones.
After testing in Japan, the platform returned to the US, re-entering the country's airspace on September 4. On September 5, it arrived in the vicinity of Sceye's headquarters in Moriarty, New Mexico, where the company conducted additional tests, after which it carried out the planned lowering of the platform.
Sceye believes that the stratosphere can become an intermediate level between the ground infrastructure and satellites. According to the company, high-altitude HAPS can provide wide coverage with lower signal delay than orbital systems, while not requiring the launch of equipment into space. ST1 was Sceye's first flight to Asia and an important test before the possible commercial launch of stratospheric platforms.
