Seminar Ozean, Eis, Atmosphäre

Unmanned stratospheric flight offers opportunities nearly as broad as space flight. Today the potential of unmanned stratospheric platforms is largely untapped, but in the future they will compete with spacecraft in a large variety of applications or serve as valuable supplement to space-based sensors. The need for wide-band connectivity, Earth imaging and sensing, space observation, atmospheric measurements, resource monitoring, and military reconnaissance are endless, but space-based systems are often expensive and risky, and require long development cycles. Stratospheric vehicles can provide a cost effective alternative in many scientific, military and commercial applications. An overview of possible application areas, key technologies and system concepts will be given. A future European stratospheric platform concept will be outlined.