Denver tech balloon startup Urban Sky expands customer base

Denver-based Urban Sky is expanding its customer base for its high-flying tech balloons.

Details: CEO Andrew Antonio said these balloons can get high-resolution images and data at much lower costs than satellites or aircraft by flying in the stratosphere — the region above where commercial aircraft fly but below low-Earth orbit.

• The balloons are about the size of a Volkswagen bus when they launch, then inflate to the size of a car garage, the Verge reports. That’s still smaller than most stratospheric balloons, which is why Urban Sky dubs them “microballoons.”
• The images can give organizations like insurance companies and environmental agencies clear visuals of ground conditions.

Driving the news: The startup announced last week that it’s getting into commercial work.

The intrigue: The company, founded in 2019, is developing a thermal camera that can be attached to its balloons to detect and monitor wildfires — which are increasinglycommon in Colorado — in real time.

• “The idea is that if there’s a lightning strike out in the mountains or an active fire, this is a really, really low-cost option to deploy a system that can scan huge portions of the forest,” Antonio tells Axios Denver.