High Altitude Platform
Continuous Stratospheric Flight
We are developing the Kea Atmos, a state-of-the-art remotely piloted, solar-powered aircraft to collect frequent, high-resolution aerial images.
After takeoff from a short runway, the Kea Atmos will take a few hours to ascend to the stratosphere, where it will continuously operate for months. The stratosphere provides a sweet spot for cost-effective, high-resolution aerial imaging. The Kea Atmos will use sunlight to power up the batteries during the day and carefully optimise its power-use. This will enable continued flight throughout the night during the hours of darkness.
The Kea Atmos is an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). It is classed as a fixed-wing High Altitude Platform (HAP) and High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) air-borne vehicle. It can also be described as a High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS), High Altitude Pseudo-Satellite (HAPS), atmospheric satellite or atmosat.
The Aerial Data Gap
Precision Data For Informed Decision-Making
Acquiring high-quality, frequent aerial data to detect changes in our environment is currently costly and difficult to obtain. Accessing large-scale imaging is only achievable through satellites and manned aircraft, but both come with significant limitations.
Satellites can only provide low to medium resolution images over specific orbits and the operational costs of building, launching and maintaining satellites is astronomical. Crewed aircraft offer high-resolution aerial images; however, they are also expensive to operate and can only achieve sporadic coverage.
The Kea Atmos will operate in a sweet spot for cost-effective, high-resolution aerial imaging in the stratosphere. But we are working on more than just harvesting better data. Kea Aerospace will manage the entire pipeline from data acquisition and storage to analysis and delivery. We will provide improved data intelligence at a cost much lower than is currently available.