Google, CNES Joining Forces To Improve Project Loon

Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online
France’s space agency, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES), has announced plans to join forces with Google on the Mountain View, California-based company’s balloon-based effort to bring the Internet to rural areas and remote countries, Project Loon.
Project Loon, launched by the tech company’s semi-secret Google X division back in 2011, currently has balloons capable of remaining in the air for up to 100 days, according to Engadget reporter Mariella Moon. Now, CNES scientists will be assisting their effort to bring the Internet to underserved parts of the world by analyzing data from ongoing tests and designing next-gen balloons.
On their end, Google will assist the French space agency by assisting with “Strateole-type long-duration balloon campaigns… similar to the Concordiasi project in 2011 but with a wider stratospheric coverage,” CNES said. Essentially, Google will be helping their new partners conduct long-haul balloon flights into the stratosphere.
“This project comes at just the right time as we seek ways to bring the Internet to underserved areas. It is a unique experience for CNES to work with a leading light of Silicon Valley like Google. Collaborations like this bring down barriers and spawn new cross-disciplinary projects,” added CNES President Jean-Yves Le Gall. “We are proud to be providing our expertise while benefiting in return from the assistance of such a great global company.”
Late last month, Google revealed that the hot air balloons being used as part of Project Loon were capable of flying 10 times longer than they did in 2013, with some of them remaining in the air for more than 100 days. In addition, the company revealed that improvements to its autofill equipment allowed them to fill the ballons with air in less than five minutes, thus making it possible to launch as many as 20 in a single day.
Furthermore, Google revealed that Project Loon balloons had collectively flown three million kilometers (roughly 1.86 million miles) – the equivalent of circumnavigating the Earth nearly 75 times or traveling to the moon and back approximately four times. While the company attributed those successes to trial and error and learning from its mistakes, this new partnership will also allow Google to draw on the expertise of others.
Dante D’Orazio of The Verge said that the announcement “should be good news for Google, because CNES isn’t just some backwater space agency. It’s said to have one of the largest stratospheric balloon programs in the world, second only to NASA, with a team of roughly 60 scientists on board.” He added that the CNES has over five decades of experience working on high-altitude research balloons.
“While the partnership between Google and CNES could improve Project Loon’s prospects, it could help Google’s prospects too,” added CNET technology columnist Don Reisinger. “The company is under a lot of pressure in Europe, having endured antitrust scrutiny, the European Parliament promoting a Google breakup, the shutting down of Google News in Spain, and difficulties scrubbing information out of search results to comply with the right-to-be-forgotten rule.”