法国军方对Stratobus表现出兴趣•在澳大利亚部署了应急卫星通信设备
泰雷兹阿莱尼亚太空公司及其大股东泰雷兹集团
已与法国国防采购局DGA签订了研究合同，以评估Stratobus型飞艇在情报，监视和侦察应用中的使用情况。
研究合同要求配备一个可以在平流层飞行并收集观测数据的全尺寸演示器。
让·菲利普·切塞尔（Jean-Philippe Chessel），
Stratobus产品线总监
两家公司表示，他们的目标是在2023年底之前进行飞行表演。
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