Taking scientific curiosity to stratospheric heights

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THE CHALLENGE

Stratoflights is a film production company founded in Germany in 2012. Established by recently graduated engineers, the company propels weather balloons equipped with cameras skywards to a very high altitude. Tobias Lohf, Co-founder and Technical Director of Stratoflights explains: "when we started, there were no tutorials, no construction kits, no nothing. Just our idea. It took us six months of trial and error until we finally launched our first stratospheric balloon."

“As we finished university we thought: Why don’t we help other people to get access to the stratosphere and launch a startup with this idea?” says Lohf  Stratoflights was born. Since then, the company grew and specialized in stratospheric flights. “We want to make the stratosphere accessible for everyone,” says Lohf.

The excellent footage that emerged from early flights resulted in a simple YouTube video. It went viral overnight and Stratoflights received significant interest from both the public and the media

Imagery from the first balloon-mounted cameras quickly became popular among the marketing departments of some major brands. “The footage from the stratosphere is quite remarkable, and the curvature of the earth is pronounced and visible,” explains Lohf, “and soon major brands got interested.”

What happens after the balloon goes ‘pop’

Typically used for forecasting weather, each balloon is equipped with a payload capsule containing a camera to record the flight in its entirety.

The balloon and its attached device can reach a peak elevation of as much as 40,000 metres – significantly higher than the flight path of a commercial airplane – at which point the balloon itself naturally bursts as a result of the difference in air pressure.

At ground level, the balloons on initial inflation have a diameter of 1.5 metres. At about 35,000 metres the atmospheric pressure is so low that the balloon expands to over 10 metres at which point it will burst. At that point a parachute opens, and the capsule will freefall to its landing position.

With no balloon keeping it aloft, the capsule fitted with camera descends to Earth, but predicting the landing point is a major challenge. The downward flight is influenced by temperature and wind, and the touchdown location may be far away from the launchpad

The Stratoflights team needed a GPS tracking device that would help them to follow, locate, and retrieve the balloon’s camera for future re-use.

THE SOLUTION

The team selected SPOT Trace as the ideal solution to monitor the flight path of the balloons, and to help the team know where the free-falling capsule has landed.

Each balloon capsule is fitted with a SPOT Trace so team members can track where the device drifts. Thanks to the SPOT app, the capsule’s journey can be displayed on users’ tablets and smartphones. Critically, users can reliably predict the landing position for speedy retrieval.

Stratoflights configured the SPOT Trace devices to send a signal every few minutes. This enables the crew and customers to follow the path of the device in near-real-time, even if it travels beyond the reach of conventional cellular networks.

SPOT Trace has proven to be the ideal solution due to its reliable tracking and wide reach. The Stratoflights team can evaluate location, wind speed and altitude to rapidly and reliably anticipate the vicinity where the capsule will land.

Coping with extremes of temperature

The robust product characteristics of SPOT Trace enable flights to be conducted at any time of year and in any location. The satellite-enabled GPS messenger can function with atmospheric temperatures ranging from 40°C down to -60°C. This means that the flight and footage can reliably be captured throughout the whole flight, even when reaching below-freezing temperatures of the ozone layer in the stratosphere.

The reliability and reach of Globalstar satellite communications was of course essential. “We simply would not be able to rely on GSM only, particularly if the flight takes place in remote locations where alternative networks are unavailable or unreliable,” explains Lohf.

Additionally, SPOT Trace’s small size, light weight and rugged build mean that it can endure harsh conditions during flight as well as rough landings.

OUTCOME

SPOT Trace helps the Stratoflights team locate and fetch its camera equipment rapidly thanks to Globalstar’s Low-Earth orbit satellite network. 

“It's important to us to recover the capsules. Failure to locate the payloads results in loss of data and the equipment that generated it. With SPOT Trace we’re always able to retrieve our equipment for data retrieval and redeployment in the future,” says Lohf/

Inspiring young scientists

In addition to supporting clients with their marketing goals, Stratoflights also aims to inspire young science students. The company conducts 20-30 school projects every year aiming to pass on the principals’ enthusiasm for this extraordinary project to the next generation.

Student experiments can evaluate a wide range of environmental factors including cosmic rays and radiation, and their impact on chemical reactions.

Young scientists may be interested in exploring what happens to a chemical experiment if conducted at very high altitude, for example. By setting up experiments in front of the camera, students will get the opportunity to see color and texture changes during ascent and decent as the chemical reactions happen right in front of their eyes.

Democratising the stratosphere

Stratoflights makes this experience available to a wider number of users by selling do-it-yourself balloon launcher kits. The package includes balloon parachute and capsule fitted with a camera, an additionally a SPOT Trace satellite GPS tracker. The kit includes a data logger that can record temperature, humidity, air pressure and other factors. for scientific analysis.

Users get all of the materials and instructions needed to conduct their own flights. The kits are sold worldwide and Lohf reports that these have been used for flights all across Europe as well as in North America and the Middle East.

Stratoflights has also attracted the attention of music festival organisers who livestream the balloons’ ascent from the crowd, and regard this aerial footage to be an enhancement for festivalgoers’ experience.

Because the balloons fly higher than aeroplanes, users are required to obtain public liability insurance as well as permission from local aviation and air traffic control authorities. But this administrative effort is clearly worth it in the opinion of Stratoflights’ commercial and academic customers.

“There are a lot of GPS trackers in the marketplace, but we appreciate SPOT Trace for its live tracking capability, and ruggedness, as well as its ubiquitous reach,” says Lohf.

Stratoflights has grown in popularity and commercial customers today include small businesses right up to global players like Mercedes Benz, LEGO, Microsoft or Amazon Prime Video. 

Whether a film production carried out by Stratoflights, or a DIY flight undertaken by students, with SPOT Trace the camera capsule can be found quickly and the results of the filming captured, studied and enjoyed.

“What's so fascinating is that we’re using SPOT Trace in ways entirely different from those that could have been envisaged by Globalstar when the device was initially created. This is another great example of how satellite technology has applications limited only by people's imaginations,” says Lohf.

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