Successful launch of Zephyr, a solar-powered uncrewed aerial vehicle

AALTO, an Airbus subsidiary, recently performed their first successful launch of solar-powered unmanned aerial vehicle Zephyr in 2025. After climbing to 60,000ft Zephyr flew over Kenya for over a week. This is a trailblazing success to utilising a High-Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) which will contribute to the successful preparation of flight trials as part of ECHO 2 later this year.

In the framework of ECHO 2 – or European Concept for Higher Altitude Operations – EUROCONTROL is collaborating with AALTO and many other partners on the integration between Air Traffic Management and Higher Altitude Operations.

ECHO 2 is a three-year SESAR Joint Undertaking project, coordinated by EUROCONTROL, which is building on research from the initial ECHO project that developed a concept of operations (ConOps) for higher airspace. Specifically, the project will focus on introducing a module on space launch real-time monitoring, and packages covering ground and air-ground operational integration procedures.

The project is at the forefront of aviation innovation, focusing on the end-to-end integration of new entrants, such as space vehicles, HAPS, supersonic and hypersonic aircraft into the EUROCONTROL Network Manager area.

The ECHO and ECHO 2 projects have received funding from the SESAR Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon Europe innovation programme under grant agreements No 890417 and No 101114697.

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or SESAR Joint Undertaking. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.