Moriarty, New Mexico – September 15, 2026 -- Sceye's ST1 high-altitude platform station (HAPS) completed a nearly 30,000-km round trip between New Mexico and Japan, returning to continental US airspace on September 4, 2026, and reaching its Moriarty headquarters airspace on September 5, 2026, for additional testing and a planned descent.
ST1 marks Sceye's first flight to Asia under a SoftBank partnership
The mission, conducted in partnership with Japanese telecom operator SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434), represented Sceye's first flight into Asia and a milestone toward commercial deployment of HAPS as stratospheric infrastructure. The platform carried a SceyeCELL module, described as a first-of-its-kind 'cell tower in the sky' designed to deliver broadband mobile access from the stratosphere directly to standard devices across wide areas. Sceye states a fully deployed HAPS platform can cover an area equivalent to roughly 500 ground-based cell towers.
Platform held position over Japan's coast for more than 7 days
ST1 operated in Japan-controlled airspace for over seven days, maintaining a station-keeping radius as tight as 5 km at altitudes between 16.5 and 17 km. During this window, the platform simultaneously handled telecommunications, drone connectivity and emergency communications tasks, including text messaging, voice calls, internet access and video streaming demonstrations. Sceye and SoftBank also tested emergency alert calls designed for large-scale disaster response alongside drone communication links.
On-board processing cut data latency by more than 40%
Using a server installed directly on the HAPS platform, Sceye and SoftBank processed data on board rather than routing it through the internet, achieving an average two-way response time of 68 milliseconds -- a latency reduction of more than 40% compared to cloud-based processing. The companies describe this as the first successful global test placing a mobile core network and web processing server on a HAPS platform, with the entire request-processing chain completed on board before results were relayed back to smartphones.
Sceye confirms performance comparable to ground networks
The platform confirmed communication characteristics comparable to terrestrial networks while reducing radio interference with ground-based base stations, according to Sceye. Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, founder and CEO of Sceye, called the flight a demonstration that stratospheric infrastructure is ready to support commercial connectivity services, including future 6G networks. Sceye's HAPS platforms maintain altitude and position through consecutive day-night cycles, functioning similarly to geostationary satellites but at roughly 1,800 times closer proximity to Earth and at a fraction of the cost.
ST1 is the first flight in Sceye's operational testing program.