Moriarty, New Mexico – September 13, 2026 -- Sceye's ST1 high-altitude platform station has completed a nearly 30,000-kilometer round trip between New Mexico and Japan, re-entering the continental United States on September 4, 2026, and reaching the company's Moriarty headquarters airspace on September 5 for final tests and controlled descent.
ST1 marks Sceye's first flight into Asian airspace under a SoftBank partnership
The month-long mission, conducted with Japanese telecom operator SoftBank Corp. (TOKYO: 9434), represents a commercial milestone for high-altitude platform station (HAPS) deployment. ST1 operated in Japanese airspace for more than seven days, maintaining continuous position over Japan's coast with a station-keeping radius of just 5 kilometers at altitudes between 16.5 and 17 km.
Platform delivers mobile broadband and emergency communications from the stratosphere
ST1 carried SceyeCELL, described as the first mobile transmitter of its kind, delivering broadband mobile connectivity directly to standard devices. The mission demonstrated text messaging, voice calls, internet access and video streaming, alongside emergency call testing via a disaster-alert system and drone communication trials. Sceye reported communication performance comparable to ground-based networks while reducing radio interference with terrestrial base stations. A fully deployed Sceye HAPS unit is designed to cover an area equivalent to approximately 500 ground transmitters.
On-platform data processing cuts latency by more than 40%
Sceye and SoftBank installed a mobile backhaul network and web server directly on the HAPS platform, achieving an average round-trip processing response time of 68 milliseconds -- a reduction in communication latency of more than 40% compared to cloud processing over the internet. The companies describe it as the first successful test worldwide of onboard data processing on a HAPS platform, with results transmitted directly back to smartphones.
Sceye positions stratospheric infrastructure as foundation for future 6G networks
"Terms like breakthrough and historic only partially capture our ST1 flight," said Mikkel Vestergaard Frandsen, founder and CEO of Sceye, adding that the mission proved the company's aircraft systems, payloads and operational infrastructure are ready for connectivity services. ST1 is the first flight in Sceye's service-testing program, with the stratospheric platform operating at roughly 1,800 times closer to Earth than geostationary satellites, at a fraction of the operating cost.