Kea Aerospace To Use Atmos With SKYTRAC’s Iridium Certus For Operation Beyond Visual Line Of Sight (BVLOS)

Kea Aerospace’s ‘Atmos’, a solar-powered remotely piloted aircraft designed for continuous high-altitude flight in the stratosphere, will now have improved connectivity and control communications when paired with the SKYTRAC Iridium Certus service, particularly when operating beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS).

The Atmos typically cruises at approximately 65,000ft for several months carrying project payloads and, with the SKYTRAC DLS-100 onboard, it is expected to transfer data and pictures in near-real-time. They anticipate uplink and downlink of 22Kbps or 88Kbps respectively.

SKYTRAC stated that the DLS-100 is ruggedized and optimized for Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP), thereby capable of supporting many platforms and implementations. SKYTRAC has been in business since 1986, pioneering R&D, evolution, and commercialization of flight information and communications technology. Headquartered in California, USA, they boast a network of over 7,500 global users, owns the stable of ACR electronics (for marine, outdoor, and aviation), runs flight data and freeflight systems (for business, commercial, and defense aircraft), and is a supplier of 5G-tolerant radar altimeters.

Kea Aerospace, founded in 2018 in Christchurch, New Zealand is a developer of aerospace technology, specifically solar-powered remotely-piloted aircraft for long-term operations in the stratosphere, to collect high-resolution aerial imagery. The Kea Atmos looks like a really sleek version of White Knight Two (a twin-fuselage aircraft) with a third half-fuselage and its own propeller, coupled with a shared T-tail, but with solar panels all over its upper surfaces! The Kea Aerospace Atmos weighs 198lbs, has an endurance of 90+ days, supports a payload weight of 22lbs, and cruises around 65kts.

FMI: https://KeaAerospace.com, https://skytrac.ca