Icarus

Icarus is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA.

Stratospheric birds for defense

Space-based sensing forces a tradeoff between quantity, quality, and timeliness of data, with vulnerable communications, limited information, and expensive, inflexible platforms.

Icarus is building APOLLO, a solar-powered autonomous stratospheric aircraft flying above 60,000 feet for weeks at a time to provide continuous coverage and low-latency data and communications.

They cite specific comparisons to low Earth orbit satellites: 5-10ms fiber-like latency versus 25-60ms, persistent 24/7 fixed coverage versus intermittent ~10-minute orbit passes, and direct-to-device high-bandwidth comms without a satellite terminal.

Founded by Henry Kwan, an aerospace engineer from Georgia Tech who previously worked on drones at NASA and on satellites at Orbital before starting the company, which has grown to about 50 employees.