Go check out Ashlee Vance's new podcast about all things stratosphere, featuring our Co-founder & CEO Andrew Antonio 🌎 🎈
Urban Sky
Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing
Urban Sky's products enable routine and easy access to the stratosphere and the value locked within it.
About us
Urban Sky's products enable routine and easy access to the stratosphere and the value locked within it. Our stratospheric Microballoon™s (mHABs) offer quick, easy, long-duration, and controllable flight in the stratosphere. And the stratosphere itself offers everything space cannot - rapid access, navigation, extended loitering, and affordability.
- Website
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http://www.urbansky.com
External link for Urban Sky
- Industry
- Aviation and Aerospace Component Manufacturing
- Company size
- 11-50 employees
- Headquarters
- Denver
- Type
- Privately Held
- Founded
- 2019
Locations
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Primary
Get directions
Denver, US
Employees at Urban Sky
Updates
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We're thrilled to announce our $30M Series B, led by Altos Ventures, with major participation from New Legacy, Lerer Hippeau, Catapult Ventures, Lavrock Ventures, New Stack Ventures, TenOneTen Ventures, DA Ventures, Union Labs Ventures, and Techstars. This capital represents a major commitment to our customers, as we'll use it to develop a new suite of connected hardware, software, and AI-centric stratospheric products that will soon unlock the full value of the stratosphere for military and commercial users. Read more at the link below.
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Urban Sky is #hiring check out some of our opportunities based here in Denver, Colorado. Apply today or share this post with your network. 🎈 https://lnkd.in/gyQHq29A
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A few days ago we posted about our Long-Wave-Infrared (LWIR) imaging mission above the Palisades Fire. During that mission (conducted on Sunday, January 19th), we also simultaneously deployed a high-resolution (~10cm) aerial imaging payload to capture RGB data of the affected area. That data is now fully processed and we're making it freely available under a Creative Commons 4.0 license. The data is formatted as a Cloud Optimized GeoTiff file, which can be opened with most GIS programs like QGIS (open source) or ArcGIS. The image below depicts the processed RGB map overlayed onto our LWIR data, collected on the same day at roughly the same time. Both data sets are available within the embedded blog post below. Please help us distribute it to those who might find it useful. https://lnkd.in/gA6jt_pE
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With support from NASA and the U.S. Air Force, we're working hard to develop a rapidly deployable, persistent, real-time, stratospheric infrared wildfire monitoring system (known as Hot Spot.) This technology has the potential to improve and augment existing wildfire monitoring capabilities in a myriad of incredible ways. While the Hot Spot system is under active development, we deployed it above the Palisades Fire on January 19th, 2025. The data we captured is freely available for research and product feedback, linked within the article below, along with a description of the mission and the underlying technology. We're hopeful that, in the not-too-distant future, we can do more to support the fight against global wildfires by leveraging the unique advantages of Hot Spot and stratospheric monitoring. Please reach out to info@urbansky.com if you have any questions about the data, and please help us to share it with those that might find it useful. https://lnkd.in/gA6jt_pE
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As wildfires become increasingly intense and frequent each year, the need for advanced fire management solutions has never been greater. In a recent interview with gotennapro, Dr. Riley Reid, Urban Sky's Lead Remote Sensing Engineer, showcased how our award-winning stratospheric wildfire solution, in collaboration with NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory & gotennapro, is revolutionizing disaster response: https://bit.ly/3CZECax #Wildfires #DisasterResponse #NASA
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Pleased to announce that we've been awarded a $99M IDIQ contract by the Air Force Research Laboratory! This is a "Phase III" contract that allows for sole source acquisition of Urban Sky products by any and all government customers. Thanks to all of our customers and partners for making this happen! Onward and upward! 🎈🌎 https://lnkd.in/gdNDrvuw
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Thrilled to share this published Nature study by David Brown, Jared Leidich, PE, and Professor Marianna Linz.
Last week, Nature Scientific Reports published a study conducted by David Brown (Urban Sky and Harvard), Professor Marianna Linz (Harvard), and myself. The study dives into global upper atmospheric winds and their role in steering High Altitude Balloons (HABs) using only altitude control. We asked the key question: "Can you always steer a HAB just by adjusting its altitude?" Our simulations covered thousands of controlled balloon flights between 50,000 and 100,000 feet, the altitude where HABs typically operate. These insights are crucial for the growing movement to replace satellites with slower, more versatile, and lower-cost aerial vehicles. Such vehicles can potentially stop above a fixed point on Earth or navigate through varying winds without lateral propulsion. Projects like Google Loon have demonstrated the value of these massive, high-cost systems. However, our findings suggest that while some level of control using wind variance is always possible, true station-keeping (holding a balloon over a fixed location) is not universally achievable. This means that, like satellites, continuous global coverage will likely require networks of smaller, more affordable balloons rather than a single system "hovering" indefinitely. In this paradigm balloons can be thought of as personally deployable satellites that can be steered, and sometimes stopped, as opposed to satellites that are functionally locked into a fixed orbit. The implications extend beyond balloons. Any high-altitude vehicle relying on wind conditions—unless capable of outpacing the wind—faces similar challenges. David’s work tested these assumptions through historical data spanning seasons and regions across the globe, exploring whether the HAB industry should prioritize large, expensive platforms or smaller, networked systems. Check out the paper and join the conversation. https://lnkd.in/g_DRbgQJ #Stratosphere #HighAltitudeBalloons #AtmosphericResearch #SatelliteReplacement #StationKeeping #WindNavigation #AerospaceInnovation #Urbansky
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Great piece from CNN on Urban Sky's wildfire monitoring and early detection technology!
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This photo demonstrates the power of the stratosphere - it illustrates the unique ability of a stratospheric balloon to "hover" continuously above a wildfire (or any target area, for that matter). The small white dot below shows the location of our Microballoon, while the white "rectangle" shows one image frame projected onto the Earth. The remaining "circles" illustrate the thousands of image frames captured while we hovered above a wildfire and continuously imaged it for hours. This type of broad-area, high-resolution "persistence" is not possible via satellite. Real-time, continuous monitoring.
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