French military shows interest in Stratobus • Emergency satcom gear deployed in Australia
Thales Alenia Space and its majority shareholder Thales Group
have signed a study contract with the French defense procurement agency DGA to evaluate the use of a Stratobus-type airship for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance applications.
The study contract calls for a full-scale demonstrator that can fly in the stratosphere and collect observations.
Jean-Philippe Chessel,
director of the Stratobus product line,
said the companies aim to have a flight demonstration by the end of 2023.
The companies
say Stratobus airships can conduct a variety of satellite- and drone-like missions, including remote sensing, environmental monitoring and communications. [Thales]
SmartSky, a company preparing a network of towers across the United States for in-flight Wi-Fi, obtained the rights to borrow another $25 million from lenders.
The Global Credit Opportunities team at BlackRock, which agreed last year to loan SmartSky $75 million, said that the full amount is now available after SmartSky passed a network deployment milestone.
SmartSky, which once expected to have its air-to-ground network operational in 2017, now anticipates starting commercial operations in the second quarter of 2020.
[SmartSky]
SpaceNews.com