World View

World View incorporated on August 30, 2012.

During a test flight in June 2014 World View successfully deployed and remotely navigated a parafoil back down to Earth from an altitude of 50,000 feet (15 km).

An October 2015 test flight brought a 10-percent scale passenger capsule to over 100,000 feet (30 km) altitude; a full-scale test is anticipated to follow.

A September 2016 flight carried a small, uncrewed, scientific payload to an altitude of over 100,000 feet (30 km) on behalf of the Southwest Research Institute through NASA's Flight Opportunities Program.

By January 2016, World View was planning to operate commercial flights from Spaceport Tucson beginning in 2017.

In April 2016, World View announced that, following $7 million in "Series A" financing, it had raised an additional $15 million in "Series B" funding.

In June 2017, World View completed a 17-hour flight featuring a KFC product; though a balloon leak cut it short from the intended four-day duration, it was World View's first flight in which a solar array was "properly pointing at the sun".

In July 2017, World View completed a 27-hour flight.

The Stratollite is a remotely operated, navigable, uncrewed stratospheric flight vehicle designed and engineered to station-keep over customer-specified areas of interest for long periods of time (days, weeks, and months). The Stratollite uses proprietary altitude control technology to rise and lower in the stratosphere, harnessing the natural currents of varying stratospheric winds to provide point-to-point navigation and loitering. The Stratollite operates at altitudes up to 95,000 ft. (30 km) with a payload capacity of 50 kg (110 lb) and 250W of continuous power to payloads. The Stratollite is primarily used for applications including remote sensing, communications, and weather.

The Stratollite consists of a high-altitude balloon which lofts up a large solar panel and a payload gondola. The Stratollite also has a steerable parachute for soft return to ground after mission, enabling payload recovery. The main innovation of the Stratollite is its steerability enabling point-to-point navigation and persistent flight over selected area. The Stratollite relies on the natural winds in the atmosphere for its propulsion; it steerability is based on its ability to control its altitude, thus harnessing winds of different directions, enabling the Stratollite to move in the direction it wants to.

World view also offer traditional, uncontrolled high-altitude balloon flights (which just drift freely, without any control of direction of travel, in the winds of the high atmosphere) with their so-called Z-Class flight vehicle. The Z-Class vehicle has much larger payload capability and higher operating altitude compared to the Stratollite. The Z-Class flight vehicle also offers a possibility for payload recovery.

World View has conducted Z-Class flights for NASA's Flight Opportunities Program (FOP), for example on March 29, 2018 when two NASA radiation detection experiments, Automated Radiation Measurements for Aerospace Safety (ARMAS) and a chip-based radiation sensor were flown out of Spaceport Tucson.