Google To Work With French Space Agency For Broadband Balloons
Google will be partnering with French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales (CNES) to advance the Project Loon broadband balloons project. France has been dealing with balloons for the past 60 years. The CNES has around 60 staff working with the balloons.
The contribution of NES in the ongoing flight analysis will be vital for Google in developing next-generation balloons.
Earlier France has worked on Concordiasi project, a project similar to Loon. Concordiasi project was a ballooning experiment that saw craft with very long intended flight times launched in Antarctica between 2008 and 2011, The Register reported.
Google and the French space agency will be woking together on new balloon designs. However without any specific goal, they'll "be working together to give new momentum to research efforts in this area."
The current situation of Project Loon balloons is that they have been able to fly over 3 million kilometers while managing to provide speed that's good enough to let people stream videos.
The partnership announcement comes midst when Google is having hard time in Europe. Dutch privacy watchdog have already issued ultimatum to revise its privacy policy and Google News will be shutting down in Spain.
