The High Altitude Pseudo Satellites – HAPS – are platforms capable of remaining stable on a fixed point of the Earth for weeks or months, operating at an altitude of about 20 km in height. This allows to integrate and extend the capabilities of the satellites in the application domains already under the responsibility of the company, for the continuation of other activities. Through the development of HAPS systems it is possible to implement in the field of Earth Observation, Telecommunications and Navigation, the services currently managed through terrestrial structures such as towers and planes (with the possibility of integrating the latter with a greater number of activities and with greater reliability).
Since the 1990s, numerous international initiatives have focused on the study of the application potential of HAPS, also called “High Altitude Platform Stations”.
The characteristics of the HAPS allow to extend the current capabilities of satellite systems to support multiple applications, such as: telecommunications, earth observation, meteorology, astronomy, positioning, defense. Technological progress, especially in Europe, indicates in the five-year period 2018-2022 a time of possible operational start-up for services of this type.
