Dear friends,
It’s great to be in touch with our very first SolarStratos newsletter! We’re delighted to be able to tell you all about what’s been happening during the launch year for our new solar adventure – very soon now, it will be taking us right to the edge of space.
First off, we’ve welcomed some new partners. Heli-Lausanne will be working with us to provide aerial photography, while the free-fall flight simulator RealFly in Sion will enable us to train and test our survival equipment, as well as our biomedical telemetry devices.
Thanks to the confidence and support of our partners – and the hard work by all the team – we now have the financial and technical resources available to build our solar-powered plane. Calin Cologan, his company PC-Aero and the SolarStratos team are working with the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (Centre suisse d’électronique et de microtechnique, CSEM) on the final design of our magnificent solar flying machine! In the coming weeks, we’ll be carrying out the first tests on our solar wing in a climate chamber at temperatures of -70° C. The construction of SolarStratos itself can begin in January 2015, marking a major milestone in our eco-adventure.
Meanwhile another milestone has been passed in the preparations for stratospheric flight: after one hundred or so jumps from planes, I’ve now got my skydiving licence thanks to the folks at Flying Devil in Bex and Géraldine Fasnacht, our head of in-flight safety.
We’ve also been able to test our biomedical telemetry system. Our scientific partner CSEM has developed a new technology in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA), and it works perfectly. Under the supervision of our doctor, Patrick Schoettker, I’ve completed a simulated flight at 6,000 m altitude in perfect safety thanks to this system – the only one of its kind in the world.
2015 will be an important year for all of us on the SolarStratos team and for our partners. Together with them and the SolarPlanet foundation, we’ve got lots of surprises in store for you! Our goal is still to complete our first solar-powered flights in 2016. You can keep up with our eco-adventure on our website and via our social media feeds.
And to send you the Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year 2015, we couldn’t resist putting together a little film for you! So here, just for you, is this exclusive video: The StratosTime.
Looking forward to being in touch with you in the New Year with more news of solar adventures!
Raphaël and all the team at SolarStratos and SolarPlanet.
