Draft:Urban Sky



Urban Sky is an American aerospace company headquartered in Denver, Colorado. Urban Sky Designs, Manufactures and operates small, altitude-stable stratospheric balloons that are primarily used for Earth Observation and remote sensing applications. .

History
Urban Sky was founded in 2019 with the goal of increasing access to the stratosphere, and reducing the cost of remote sensing through balloon miniaturization and new approaches to balloon control. In 2020 Urban Sky began routine stratospheric operations and became the first company ever to reuse a stratospheric balloon. In 2021 Urban Sky raised a $4.1M investment round to further the development of the novel balloon platforms. In 2022 Urban Sky started routine commercial operations after more than 50 test flights. The initial product Urban Sky released was an aerial imagery product at a resolution of 10-cm. . Alongside its visual spectrum imager Urban Sky developed a Long Wave Infrared imaging system through a grant from NASA created primarily to detect and monitor wildfires with scanning rates similar to that of satellites with higher resolution. That same year Urban Sky was awarded 3 Air Force Grants to develop new sensor systems including a real-time thermal sensor developed in partnership with the University of Colorado. In 2022 Urban Sky won a National Science Foundation grant to develop more precise placement technology for the balloon systems. . In 2023 Urban Sky was the winner of the National Security Innovation Network challenge for their remote sensing technologies. and that same year started flying communications related missions with a first stratospheric communications flight partnered with goTenna. Two balloons were flown in the demonstration maintaining an altitude of 57,000 feet simultaneously in the 5 hour flight establishing a line-of-site network spanning at least 14,412 square miles. . In October of 2023 the company closed a $9.75M series A funding round to scale imaging operations across the western United States. In 2024 the company announced multiple wildfire campaigns and was announced as one of two companies selected to participate in the NASA firesense campaign and announcing a new Long Wave Infrared sensor that can scan the earth for fires at rates of 3,000 square kilometers per hour at a resolution of 3.5 meters.

Microballoon technology
Urban Sky Remote Sensing balloons operate in the stratosphere at an altitude of about 20km (about 65,000 feet), and are roughly the size of a car at launch with a payload attached underneath. "they offer the high-res aerial imagery needed to monitor the aftermath of wildfires, and to even image entire cities". The balloons grow in volume as they ascent and are roughly 11 times larger in the stratosphere than when they are near the ground. The balloons are propelled by the wind, allowing them to drift over predetermined targets from mobile launch location depending on season. Urban Sky balloons are the world's first reusable stratospheric balloons. The small balloons fly in the same regulatory category as most weather balloons, limiting payload mass to 2.7 Kg per package, and operate at an altitude of around 20 km. In 2023 they were operating more than one stratospheric flight per week in the western United States.