Moriarty, New Mexico – September 15, 2026 -- Sceye's ST1 high-altitude platform system completed a nearly 30,000-km round trip between New Mexico and Japan, returning to U.S. airspace on September 4, 2026, and reaching the company's Moriarty, New Mexico headquarters on September 5, marking the first flight by a Sceye HAPS to Asia.

ST1 sustained station-keeping off Japan's coast for over seven days

The unmanned airship operated in Japan-managed airspace for more than a week, holding position within a 5-km search radius while flying at altitudes between 16.5 km and 17 km. The mission, conducted with SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434), tested telecommunications, drone communication and emergency-response capabilities from the stratosphere.

SceyeCELL payload delivered mobile broadband directly to standard smartphones

ST1 carried SceyeCELL, a stratospheric base station designed to provide direct-to-standard-device mobile coverage. Sceye and SoftBank demonstrated SMS, voice calls, internet access and video streaming, alongside tests of a disaster-scale emergency alert system and drone communication links. The companies reported communication performance comparable to terrestrial networks while reducing radio interference with ground-based base stations. At full operational capacity, a single Sceye HAPS is designed to cover an area equivalent to roughly 500 terrestrial cell towers.

Onboard data processing cut latency by more than 40%

Using a server installed on the HAPS itself, Sceye and SoftBank processed data directly on the platform, achieving an average round-trip response time of 68 milliseconds — a reduction of over 40% compared with internet-based cloud processing. The companies say this marks the first successful test worldwide of a mobile core network and web server installed on a HAPS, allowing response processing to occur entirely onboard before results are sent back to smartphones.

CEO calls the flight a step toward stratospheric infrastructure

"This mission has not only proven that our technology, our vehicle systems, our payload and our operational infrastructure for connectivity services are ready, but also that the stratosphere is where future non-terrestrial infrastructure will be built,