TAMPA, Fla. — Stratospheric pseudo-satellites are shedding their reputation as fringe experiments as governments and industry step up demand, according to executives closing in on commercial services for their high-altitude platform stations (HAPS).

Aalto of the U.K. and U.S.-based Sceye and Aerostar are now regularly flying HAPS test missions in the stratosphere following years of technology advances in energy storage, lightweight materials and station-keeping systems.

“It means that we’re not village idiots anymore,” Sceye CEO Mikkel Frandsen said Sept. 16 during a discussion on HAPS at World Space Business Week in Paris.

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