HAPS (High-Altitude Pseudo-Satellites) are a novel concept that is being developed to provide several types of services that can complement and enhance satellite-based services. HAPS are aircraft (airplanes, balloons, or similar platforms) which operate in the high atmosphere in order to provide with high availability and proximity services such as Earth Observation and telecommunications.

Spain and Portugal have agreed to initiate studies to analyze the feasibility of developing in collaboration a HAPS system. The studies will be oriented to map the technical competences in both countries, in order to identify the capabilities that could allow the development of a HAPS system. As part of this study, an analysis of the market opportunities will be included, considering the needs identified in the potential user community.

The studies will be carried out during 2019-2020, and depending on their outputs, follow-on activities will be funded. The AIR Centre target community is encouraged to contribute to this activity, which aims at performing several tasks: (a) collecting the applicable user needs and constraints in Portugal, Spain and additional Atlantic countries, which could contribute to the development of the HAPS system (b) identify technological capabilities, which could be made available in contributing countries (c) survey and describe the possible system concepts and business models to realize the objectives of the HAPS activity.