Loon, a subsidiary of Alphabet, was focused on providing internet access to underserved communities using a network of high-altitude balloons acting as "floating cell towers." These balloons, designed to endure harsh stratospheric conditions, partnered with telecommunications service providers to expand network reach, especially in rural and remote areas. Although the project was shut down in January 2021, its free-space optical communication technology has been extended as another project supported by Google X, called Taara. Loon's technologies are now being used in other Alphabet projects and spin-offs like Aalyria, which focuses on network orchestration across various domains, including space.
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Brian Barritt, Aalyria’s chief technology officer, previously worked at Google and helped develop Spacetime under Project Loon.
Alphabet shut down Project Loon in 2021, enabling the opportunity for Aalyria to acquire Spacetime technology.
Julie Kearney previously worked at private legal practices and telecom companies and headed communications regulation and policy at Loon until Alphabet ended the project in 2021.
Google’s Loon program was launched in 2014 and shut down in 2021.
David Hansell is the Global Head of Aviation, Regulation and Policy at Loon LLC.
Competition from companies using thousands of smallsat LEO constellations such as SpaceX’s Starlink and Blue Origin contributed to Loon’s business case failure.
Telkom Kenya deployed 35 Loon balloons in 2020 to provide a 0.004 kg LTE network across a 31,000-square-mile area including Nairobi.
Loon licensed its network operating system to Telesat to support Telesat’s planned LEO constellation.
Google announced on 2021-01-21 that it is shutting down Loon.
In July 2020 Loon started providing commercial service in parts of Kenya using about 35 balloons to cover nearly 50,000 square kilometers.
After spinning off, Loon raised $125,000,000 in 2019 from a SoftBank-backed fund.
Google started Loon in 2012 as part of X and spun it out into a separate company in 2018.
Optical communications used to provide links between Loon balloons have been spun out into a separate project called Taara.
Loon had spent the $125,000,000 and was struggling to raise additional funding due to an uncertain path to profitability.
SES provided satellite capacity through its O3b constellation in 2017 to support Loon balloon deployments in Puerto Rico and Peru after natural disasters.
Loon has agreed to deliver a network operating system design that Telesat can use to support its LEO constellation.
Loon is a subsidiary of Alphabet that promotes networking technology and user interfaces developed to operate its high-altitude balloons for constellations of nongeostationary orbiting satellites.