lighter than air.
LHEVIA builds lighter-than-air stratospheric platforms — connectivity, Earth observation, and persistent overhead presence from 1 to 20 km, owned and operated by the nations that deploy them.
Coming soonOverhead presence, where nations need it.
ALT 01 KMSatellites sit hundreds of kilometres up — in orbits not always under national control. Towers and fibre stop where the map runs out. LHEVIA occupies the sovereign layer in between — persistent stratospheric presence that a government owns, operates, and repositions.
Each lighter-than-air platform holds station over a region, covering a wide ground footprint, and can be repositioned, recovered and relaunched as requirements change — with no dependence on foreign constellations or new ground build-out.
The result is infrastructure a government controls end to end — connectivity and Earth observation on station, when and where the nation needs it.
Wide coverage
A single platform at altitude can serve a footprint that would take dozens of ground masts to match.
Repositionable
Coverage moves as requirements move — demand shifts, disaster response, seasonal operations.
Recoverable
Platforms return for maintenance, payload upgrades, and reflight — capability satellites do not offer.
Hybrid propulsion. Ion wind and propellers.
ALT 10 KMLHEVIA's lighter-than-air platforms use hybrid propulsion — electroaerodynamic (ion-wind) thrust combined with conventional propellers, all electrically driven.
Between two electrodes we raise a very high voltage. The intense field strips electrons from nearby air molecules, ionising them. Those charged particles rush toward the opposite electrode and, on the way, collide with millions of ordinary air molecules — dragging them along. That coherent flow is the ionic wind, and its reaction is thrust.
Electrically driven propellers provide complementary thrust authority. Together, ion-wind and propellers are sized for sustained station-keeping in low-density stratospheric air.
Three capabilities. One platform.
ALT 17 KMConnectivity
Persistent aerial relay owned and operated by the nation that deploys it — independent of foreign satellite constellations or terrestrial network gaps.
Earth observation
Continuous overhead monitoring of territory, environment, and resources — from a platform the nation owns, not a commercial constellation it subscribes to.
Extended detection
The persistent top-down vantage from altitude extends detection and sensing range at stand-off distances — an emerging capability the stratospheric position is well suited to support.
Built in Rome, for the stratosphere.
LHEVIA is an aerospace company founded in Roma, Italia. We build lighter-than-air stratospheric platforms — infrastructure for the nations that own and operate them.
LTA · lighter‑than‑air
LHEVIA · the high, light air — and the altitude we fly it at