Research progress and requirement analysis of envelope materials for near space airship

The near space airship has widespread and uninterrupted ability of efficient information capturing and transmitting, which is the future information platform recently developed warmly in the world. The envelope materials are the chief materials of the near space airship, and regarded as the foundation of developing the near space airship, whose mass and performance determine the size, service life and cost of the airship. Aiming at several difficulties existing in the selection and application of the envelope materials for the near space airship, and based on the project requirements of the envelope materials, several aspects of the research progress in the envelope materials were reviewed in this paper, including the strength, weatherability, barrier property and test evaluation method, and the direction of future research on the high performance envelope materials for the near space airship were discussed.