DECRYPTAGE – The French start-up offers manufacturers and laboratories the opportunity to conduct experiments at altitude. This is the first step towards launching tourist flights 25 km from Earth in 2026.
New support for Zephalto’s reusable stratospheric balloon project. After embarking BpifranceCharles Beigbeder’s Expansion fund, M Capital, the Occitanie region and Airbus Développement, the French start-up brought on board the Magellim group, via its fund dedicated to decarbonization. The latter was convinced by the project, after the first successful flight at 6 km altitude last October.
” For the first time, we tested Lucie, our one-ton pressurized cabin prototype, and the balloon’s behavior at different altitudes, with two pilots “, explains Vincent Farret d’Astiès, CEO of the start-up, which he founded in 2016 after leaving his job as an air traffic controller. The balloon, comprising a 100-meter-high reusable envelope made of special polymers and the capsule, took off from Albi (Tarn) with scientific and industrial payloads on board. It climbed safely into the stratosphere…
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