Their main activities include high-atmospheric lighter-than-air flights carrying cameras or miniature experiments called PongSats and minicubes.
[1] An early suborbital space launch attempt using a rockoon (balloon-launched high power rocket) at the Black Rock Desert in northwestern Nevada in May 1999 was unsuccessful.
[3] In the early 21st century they developed a V-shaped high-altitude airship under a U.S. Air Force initiative to provide the rapid launch of battlefield communication and monitoring systems.
[4][5] Since then, JP Aerospace has launched several balloons into the upper atmosphere, carrying mixed payloads for research students and media companies.
Media clients have included The Discovery Channel, National Geographic, and Toshiba's 2009 television commercial Space Chair.
JP Aerospace claim to have carried many hundreds or thousands of student PongSat projects to a near-space environment at low cost.
[citation needed] JP Aerospace obtained a contract for development of military communication and surveillance airships designed to hover over battlefields at altitudes too high for conventional anti-aircraft systems.
[citation needed] Other vehicles are still under development, and JP aerospace has subsequently flown several aerostats as testbeds for ATO hardware and techniques.
Multiple vehicles are needed because an airship made strong enough to survive the dense and turbulent lower atmosphere would be too small and heavy to lift payloads high enough.
[12] A fourth airship design similar to the record-breaking Tandem but based on air-filled beams will be required for the assembly of Dark Sky Station.
A long, V-shaped planform with an airfoil profile would provide aerodynamic lift to supplement the airship's inherent buoyancy, with the craft driven by propellers designed to operate in a near vacuum.
At 180,000 ft it would accelerate forwards using lightweight, low power ion propulsion, enabling it to rise further with additional aerodynamic lift.