A Novel Concept for Stratospheric Communications and Surveillance : Star Light

StarLight is a first-ever, persistent, maneuverable, high-altitude, hybrid, lighter-thanair (LTA) vehicle designed to provide continuous communications and surveillance capabilities over a wide geographical area. StarLight will operate at an altitude between 70,000 and 100,000 feet mean sea level, for a minimum duration of 6 weeks, giving its payloads an operational area of coverage exceeding 160,000 sq miles at maximum altitude. In addition to its LTA capabilities, StarLight incorporates an innovative flight control system to provide a maneuverable vehicle capable of station keeping and/or flying a specified ground track. Control innovations include a mechanically -driven rotating lower stage to easily change the direction of thrust (0-360°), and an actuator control that changes the pitch/roll attitude of the upper stage balloon envelope to accommodate vertical maneuvering above neutral buoyancy. The associated concept of operations allows for remote operations with minimum logistics and infrastructure. The total system design provides multifunctionality to maximize platform utility and easily support defense, security, communications, intelligence, earth sciences and other federal and commercial applications.