Set PHASAs to stun
December 24, 2024
BAE Systems has celebrated the culmination of a new series of flight tests for its High Altitude Pseudo Satellite (HAPS) Uncrewed Aerial System (UAS), PHASA-35, taking it a step closer to commercial stratospheric operations.
The latest series of flights (conducted from New Mexico’s Spaceport America) saw the solar-powered aircraft fly for more than 24 consecutive hours, climbing to more than 66,000 feet and cruising in the stratosphere before being repdeployed just two days later. BAE Systems said this quick turnaround time was a “major milestone” in the development of the 35m-wingspan platform, “demonstrating its ability to be launched, flown, potentially reconfigured and then relaunched again so quickly”.
PHASA-35 is being developed to operate above the weather and conventional traffic, offering “the potential to provide a persistent and stable platform for uses including ultra-long endurance intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” explains BAE Systems. As part of this mission profile, the latest trials also saw the aircraft carry a new software defined radio sensor developed by BAE Systems’ Digital Intelligence business, weighing more than twice as much as the previous payload.
The PHASA-35 team will now use the data from these most recent trials to continue to mature the technology, with the next iteration of the aircraft already built at BAE Systems subsidiary Prismatic’s UK site. With this new model having more than twice the existing solar power generation and storage capacity, it is expected to be capable of “stratospheric missions of increasing duration and complexity from next year onwards”.
The PHASA-35 project began in 2018 and first reached the stratosphere in July 2023. Prismatic sits within FalconWorks, the research and development arm of BAE Systems’ Air Sector. FalconWorks managing director Dave Holmes concluded: “These latest trials draw on a huge amount of collaboration between Prismatic the wider BAE Systems business and industry partners. They demonstrate the credibility and capability of the system for operational use”.
