Context: The National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL) in Bengaluru has successfully completed the first test of a solar powered “pseudo satellite”, a new age unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that can significantly increase India’s surveillance and monitoring capabilities in the border areas.
HAPS
- High-altitude pseudo satellites, or HAPS, are unmanned air vehicles that can hold a fixed position.
- It can fly at an altitude of 18-20 km from the ground- almost double the heights attained by commercial airplanes.
- It has the ability to generate solar power, so it can remain in the air for months and even years-giving the advantage of a satellite.
Working of HAPS
- They move at just about 80-100 km per hour at a height of 20 km above the Earth’s surface.
- These features help it to gauge an area for a long time.
- They can easily keep an eye over 200km and can observe everything even over a 400 sq km area with 5 cm resolution.
- It can work like a geostationary satellite and can be easily redeployed at any location with a different payload.
Challenges with operating HAPS
- Energy challenge-The primary challenge is to generate enough solar power to keep the aircraft flying, the payload operating and the batteries charging.
- Design related challenges-The aircraft should be extremely lightweight to minimize the power requirement, but it also has to be stable.
- That’s why this aircraft is meant to fly in the stratosphere.
- In the stratosphere, the wind speed is very low, ideal for light weight aircraft to remain stable.
- Challenges due to the stratosphere: Temperature is as low as -50 degree Celsius and even lower, which demands electronics devices to remain warm, this in turn leads to more power resources.
- The low density of air in this layer creates complications in producing lifts and thrust.
- Presence of jet streams in tropical areas also adds to challenges.
Need of HAPS
- The need for development of high-endurance, high-altitude flying instruments arose from the desire to have continuous surveillance of border areas to detect changes or movements, particularly in the wake of the Doklam standoff in 2017.
- Benefit over battery powered UAV and Satellite: Battery-powered UAVs can remain in air for a limited period of time and can scan relatively smaller areas.
- Satellites placed in low-earth orbits and meant to observe the Earth usually move in their orbits and are not watching constantly.
Potential Benefits of HAPS
- Search and rescue missions: HAPS vehicles travel closer to the earth than satellites but can loiter locally more readily than other aircraft. This means that they are excellent tools for observation, including search and rescue missions.
- Disaster relief: HAPS vehicles can offer live situation reports and even replace failed communication networks, making them ideal for disaster relief. Interlinked HAPS vehicles offer potential advantages as they can provide services with minimal ground network infrastructure, which is ideal when a disaster is unfolding or expected to occur.
- Environmental monitoring
- Continuous, real-time monitoring of environmental areas is critical to protect against natural and human threats. Be it fire, flooding, poachers or other illegal activities; many things can happen without a watchful eye, especially in challenging terrain or when there is a lack of available human resources.
- HAPS vehicles can fill in the gaps for environmental monitoring with a continuous flow of data with low latency. HAPS vehicles can cover a vast area, scanning, detecting, and tracking concerns. Any issues can be sent to a ground team, who can move in or take action.
- Agriculture: HAPS vehicles work much like drones for agriculture, allowing monitoring and management. They again offer real-time information with reliable imagery and low latency, ensuring crops are as productive as possible.
- Maritime monitoring: HAPS vehicles are vital for surveillance, including maritime monitoring. As outlined above, they can be used for pollution monitoring, vessel detection, and search and rescue missions.
- Military intelligence: HAPS vehicles can do much for the military beyond search and rescue and maritime monitoring applications. HAPS vehicles can collect a lot of data, which along with their wide range and high altitude, can allow for military surveillance and reconnaissance.
Countries that are involved in developing HAPS.
- NASA has been using solar-powered engines for its Pathfinder series of aircraft.
- China, South Korea, and the UK are some of the other countries where this development is taking place.
- Some private companies are also developing HAPS, even in India.
India and HAPS
- HAPS is a still-developing technology, and the successful test flight puts India among a very small group of countries currently experimenting with this technology.
- A Bengaluru-based NewSpace Research and Technologies, a deep-tech start-up, flew a similar solar-powered UAV, having developed the technology through the Innovation of Defence Excellence initiative of the Defence Ministry.