Strela Instruments (Top 30)

Mission

The mission is to build the SpaceX for weather balloons - saving meteorological agencies millions of euros and making the Earth greener along the way.

The challenge

Every day around 3000 weather balloons are launched around the world carrying expensive single-use sensors. These pollute the environment and cost meteorological agencies a lot of money (~200 euro/piece).

The solution

We will mount the meteorological sensors onto an ultralight glider airplane. The glider with the sensors will be carried through the atmosphere by a bio-degradable balloon to an altitude of ~30km, where the balloon will pop. From there, the traditional single-use sensors simply drop to the ground, but our glider will autonomously descend back to the meteorological station it was launched from - ready to be used again.