Recently lifted by a $100 million funding commitment from a Japanese consortium, Farnborough-based AALTO is poised to launch a new series of customer flights with its ultra-long-endurance Zephyr vehicle.
To be staged from a soon-to-be-opened facility in Kenya, the coming tests will showcase the diverse capabilities of the so-called High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), AALTO chief executive Samer Halawi explains.
“We have several missions for customers. One of them is a connectivity demonstration, another is an Earth observation demonstration, and the third is a customer-provided payload.”
Operations from the company’s first AALTOport location are close to taking off, Halawi told FlightGlobal in the run-up to the Farnborough air show.
“We are progressing really well. We have a forward operating base, our hangar is being finalised, and approvals are in the final stage. We expect to start launching aircraft from Kenya pretty soon.”
With a 25m (82ft) wingspan, 75kg (165lb) maximum take-off weight and designed to fly at altitudes of up to 75,000ft – inside the stratosphere – the solar-powered Zephyr has to date demonstrated a maximum flight endurance of 64 days.
Stripped of the two small electric motors, wing-mounted solar arrays and batteries that enable it to sustain round-the-clock operations, its bare airframe weighs in at only 30kg.
The company has already tested battery life of up to 180 days, and aims to eventually be able to sustain nonstop flight for up to one year.
In early June, the company detailed its relationship with a consortium formed of NTT DOCOMO, Space Compass, Mizuho Bank and the Development Bank of Japan, to deliver non-terrestrial services.
“Their view of HAPS aligns very much with ours and validates our business model and strategy for mobile connectivity, so that’s very important,” Halawi says.
“They have been a customer for a while,” he says of NTT DOCOMO – which has more than 89 million subscriptions for its network services. “So they understand where we are in terms of our technical maturity and development.”
In addition to enabling connectivity over remote locations, the Japanese consortium also plans to use Zephyr vehicles to provide support following natural disasters.
Entry into service is set for 2026, with the Japanese investment “subject to closing conditions and regulatory approvals”.
Meanwhile, Halawi says the company is “working really well hand in hand with the CAA [UK Civil Aviation Authority],” on its route towards securing certification.
The Airbus Defence & Space-owned company is having a busy show. “We have a big stand, which is our [production] facility,” says Halawi, referring to AALTO’s Kelleher Building – located just metres outside the perimeter fence at Farnborough.
“It’s about the quality of the visitors that we’re expecting,” he says, describing these as to include potential partners and customers. “There’s a growing interest and awareness of what we’re doing. So we’re expecting a lot of engagement with different entities.”
Meanwhile, the company has developed a new launch capability for the aircraft, which until now has been hand-deployed by a ground team.
Named ELVIS, the vehicle – derived from a ground rig used in the film industry – will enable a Zephyr to gain the required inertia before launch, and “makes it more repeatable and consistent, moving away from prototyping into industrialisation”.
“It’s aviation meets Hollywood,” Halawi says.
The company also has outlined a new operating concept for its service, which is already planned to use a network of AALTOports in multiple countries. “There will be places where we will need to have aircraft on standby [in the air] because they are being used for disaster management,” he says. In such situations, a so-called AALTOpark holding location will be used. This will be “close enough to the location where it might be deployed”, Halawi says.
“Between the spread locations of AALTOports and the concept of AALTOparks we should be able to cover any location around the world.”
Shorter term, its focus is on conducting successful proving flights from Kenya. “It’s incumbent on us right now to demonstrate the field of capabilities that we’re planning to do this year, but we are also getting a lot of interest from other customers that are starting to hear what AALTO HAPS can do for them,” Halawi says.
“The mobile industry is a quick-moving industry. They see technology, they see it working and they adopt it within a very short time.”
And beyond the momentum that the Japanese consortium’s high-level backing will deliver, Halawi says: “It also gives us enough room so that we don’t have to look for other financing at this time, so we can focus on executing the key priorities we have as a company. But it does, of course, encourage other entities to start talking to us.”
