Colorado-based aerial remote imaging company Urban Sky has announced that it has begun commercial operations to provide full-color imagery from its “microballoon” platform that photographs the Earth from the stratosphere. The company says it has developed the world’s first reusable stratospheric balloon that is capable of collecting multiple types of remote sensing data from between 16 and 22 kilometers (between about 6.8 and 13.6 miles) above Earth. Urban Sky calls them “microballoons,” but that is just the company’s branding for its aerial platform. They pack down to the size of a van and expand to the size of a small garage when deployed. The company says that the benefit of its platform is that it can be launched from virtually anywhere in a matter of minutes by a single person. After launch, the balloons can rapidly collect thousands of square kilometers of “ultra-high-resolution” imagery per flight.