---
title: "Thinking Balloon Tests Autonomous Aerostat for 3 Days"
description: "The aerostat launched, held position, docked and refilled its lifting gas without a crew doing it by hand, and the brothers behind the startup are now..."
url: "https://bharat.digital/originals/thinking-balloon-autonomous-tethered-aerostat-3-day-test-iisc-nov-2026/index.md"
canonical: "https://bharat.digital/originals/thinking-balloon-autonomous-tethered-aerostat-3-day-test-iisc-nov-2026/"
published: "2026-11-14T00:50:00+04:00"
updated: "2026-11-14T00:50:00+04:00"
section: "Originals"
type: "startup"
author: "bharat.digital desk"
image: "https://bharat.digital/img/originals/thinking-balloon-autonomous-tethered-aerostat-3-day-test-iisc-nov-2026-auto-2216c750-og.jpg"
language: "en-IN"
site: "bharat.digital"
---

# IISc-incubated Thinking Balloon flies its autonomous tethered aerostat for three days straight near Bengaluru

*The aerostat launched, held position, docked and refilled its lifting gas without a crew doing it by hand, and the brothers behind the startup are now starting port and industrial pilots.*

By bharat.digital desk. Startup, Startups & Fintech. Published 2026-11-14T00:50:00+04:00. 2 min read.

![IISc-incubated Thinking Balloon flies its autonomous tethered aerostat for three days straight near Bengaluru](https://bharat.digital/img/originals/thinking-balloon-autonomous-tethered-aerostat-3-day-test-iisc-nov-2026-auto-2216c750-hero.webp)

## At a glance

- Company: Thinking Balloon
- What it does: Autonomous tethered aerostats with a ground station that launches, recovers and services them, for port, industrial and test range monitoring
- Based in: Bengaluru
- Latest: Completed 3-day autonomous tethered aerostat test
- Date: 2026-10-30
- Founders: Rushabh Chalke (CEO), Saurabh Chalke (CTO)

Bengaluru deeptech startup Thinking Balloon has tested its autonomous tethered aerostat for three days in a row, from 28 to 30 October, at a test site near Nelamangala on the edge of the city. Startuppedia reported on 12 November that the system can launch, climb to a chosen height, hold its position, come back to its ground station, dock and refill its lifting gas on its own. The startup's incubator, the Foundation for Science, Innovation and Development (FSID) at IISc, also announced the test.

An aerostat is a balloon filled with a lifting gas such as helium and tied to the ground by a strong tether. Because the gas does the lifting, it does not burn energy just to stay up the way a drone does, so it can keep cameras, radios or other sensors in the air for long periods. Thinking Balloon's pitch is the ground station: a machine that launches, recovers and services the balloon, so a site does not need a large crew to run one.

The company operates as Thinking Near Space Private Limited and was founded in 2024 by brothers Rushabh Chalke, the CEO, who handles business and defence partnerships, and Saurabh Chalke, the CTO, who works on flight systems and payloads. The founders built the balloon platform and its ground station in house, and the first envelopes flew in August 2025. The company says its demonstrator has now completed more than 100 autonomous launch and recovery cycles in field testing.

Its first planned uses are day and night camera monitoring above ports and industrial plants, and work at aerospace test ranges such as drop tests, counter-drone trials and telemetry relay. In a blog post on 9 November, co-founder Saurabh Chalke wrote that the team is already working on a next version built to fly in more kinds of weather, that first port and industrial pilots are starting, and that what the cameras cover and keep on a pilot is agreed with the port before the first flight.

## Sources

1. [Startuppedia: Bengaluru-based Thinking Balloon successfully tests its autonomous tethered aerostat for 3 days continuously](https://startuppedia.in/trending/startup-news/thinking-balloon-successfully-tests-its-autonomous-tethered-aerostat-for-3-days-12803508)
2. [FSID, IISc Bangalore: announcement of Thinking Balloon's three-day test (LinkedIn)](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/fsid_fsid-iisc-deeptech-activity-7523981861447204864-MD2f)
3. [FSID, IISc: Thinking Balloon incubatee profile](https://www.fsid-iisc.in/incubatees/thinking-balloon/)
4. [Thinking Balloon blog: Lighter than air, heavier than it looks](https://www.thinkingballoon.com/blog/lighter-than-air-heavier-than-it-looks)

First spotted in a post on X: https://x.com/RuntimeBRT/status/2120413549961064688

Written by the bharat.digital desk from the sources above. Figures are as reported by those sources.