Massive UFO shooting in Turkey in 2023 actually started with some shocks. In early February, a US fighter jet shot down a Chinese reconnaissance balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Three more unidentified flying objects were shot down over Alaska, the Yukon, and Lake Huron. But late last week, U.S. and Canadian officials confirmed that debris from the latter three objects had been identified after U.S. President Joe Biden said they were not believed to be part of China’s broader aerial surveillance operations. The situation apparently ended in whining when the retrieval and research efforts were halted.
Now that the official search is over, we may never be certain, but we have good reason to believe that at least one of these three UFOs is actually no longer ‘unidentified’. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the object launched from the Yukon sky may have been something called a “pico balloon” used for basic atmospheric surveys at altitudes of 20,000 to 50,000 feet.
Purchased for less than $15 and operated by amateur radio enthusiast group Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, the silver 32-inch-wide Pico balloon called K9YO-15 is set to launch in North Chicago in October 2022. Launched from a nature reserve. The 10-gram (0.35-ounce) payload included a radio tracker, solar panels, and long antenna wires. About 123 days later, on February 11, 2023, K9YO-15, making her seventh circumnavigation of the world, lost contact with the Pico balloon near the border of Alaska and Yukon. This was the same day that his UFO was shot down by his F-22 fighter jet in the United States using a nearly $500,000 Sidewinder missile. Since then, there has been no contact from K9YO-15.
But regardless of the identification of individual objects, a larger question remains: Is harmless balloon flight for scientific research a new and excessive threat from the United States and other nations against the possibility of hostile intrusion into sovereign airspace? Can vigilance coexist? Or are the days of the leniency of routine balloon research over?
What we want: “Stricter rules” and “common global norms”
The aggressive incursion of a Chinese spy balloon and the subsequent shooting down of three unknown airborne objects was serious enough to elicit a public address from the White House by President Biden on Feb. 16.
“We still don’t know exactly what these three objects were,” Biden said. There is nothing to suggest that it was a surveillance vehicle from a US intelligence agency.” Instead, he noted that U.S. intelligence assessments concluded that “those three objects were civilian, recreational, or meteorological research.” “It is most likely a balloon tied to a research institute conducting or performing other scientific research.” Since we were unable to eliminate them, we have ordered the removal of these three objects.”
In his remarks, Mr. Biden called for “tighter rules” on how the United States would deal with unidentified objects that demand action and those that do not. Additionally, he called on the Secretary of State to establish “common global norms in this largely unregulated space.”
contact address Scientific American, The Federal Aviation Administration said it has comprehensive regulations for US operators to safely conduct free, pilotless balloon flights.
Among other things, regulations require balloons to be equipped so that they can be tracked by radar, and their operators must notify the FAA before and during launch. In addition, the operator must monitor and record the balloon’s course, provide position reports to the FAA upon request, and notify the FAA of the timing and expected trajectory of the balloon’s descent.
Such regulations are essential to ensure the continued operation of high-altitude balloons. High-altitude balloons play an important role in collecting detailed real-time data for weather forecasting and climate monitoring. About 1,000 weather balloons equipped with battery-powered sensors are launched every day, according to a statement released last week by the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO). They soar for hours before rupturing at high altitude and airdropping data-stuffed payloads to Earth via parachutes.
Pico balloon launch numbers by hobbyists are hard to come by. But according to estimates by Bill Brown, a high-altitude balloon expert and rocket engineer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, student organizations and amateur radio groups around the world launch at least a few hundred pico balloons each year. It has launched, mostly in the US and Europe. “Around the world, he has about 20 to 30 amateur radio pico balloons a day, with three to four crossing North America every day,” he says.
High frontier regulation
A logical first step towards Biden’s call for stricter rules would be for the U.S. government to get a better sense of what is already in the sky. Detection and destruction of three UFOs against smaller objects, as these events were reportedly caused by modifications to the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) radar system inspired by Chinese balloons. It shows that you are more sensitive.
“I expect something meaningful [regulatory] change happens from there [U.S. government] Douglas Malnati, a New Jersey-based radio amateur and Pico balloon operator, said:
The Chinese reconnaissance balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina was huge, the size of three buses and carrying over 2,000 pounds of intelligence-gathering equipment. By contrast, Mulnati points out that Pico balloons are little more than his party balloons, oversized Mylar that can carry a few pennies of weight. There is clearly a range of sizes to consider, he said, and pico balloons may be too small or too small a threat to be worth making meaningful regulatory changes.
“It’s about as harmful as a party balloon with a dime taped to it,” Malnati says. “Party balloons are released on a regular basis, either by accident or on purpose.
Weather balloons and other large inflatables are likely to come under renewed scrutiny from regulators, said Jason Krueger, president and founder of StratoStar in Noblesville, Indiana. Scientists and hobbyists alike. For example, launching a sizable balloon may soon require filing a so-called Notice of Flight Mission (NOTAM) with the FAA, he says.
“If you look at the early days of the aviation industry, you can see that the effects of regulation have now created an industry that has an excellent safety record and is able to travel the world,” says Krueger. . “Over the past decade, there has been an exponential increase in the use of the atmosphere at all levels: drones near the ground, new aircraft in the clouds, and spacecraft launched into orbit every day. To keep it, it makes sense to continue working on new regulations.”
spy discovery
Outside of updated regulations, another promising avenue is the possible flight profile of spy balloons, which tend to fly larger, higher and farther than most balloons currently used for scientific research. is to distinguish between
Admittedly, making such a distinction is not always easy. Pico balloons, for example, are small and ultralight (both characteristics seemingly contradictory to reconnaissance balloons), but they can orbit the Earth repeatedly, as demonstrated by the globe-trotting K9YO-15. can stay in the air long enough to in the meantime. In the absence of stricter regulations, for now, the onus is on hobbyists to somehow prevent balloons from drifting into unauthorized airspace, and at least provide launch and flight path details to relevant government agencies. to avoid future false positives.
Regarding Chinese reconnaissance balloons and the like, StratoStar’s Kruger speculates that such aircraft utilize advanced “ultra-high pressure” technology. This allows very long flights even for very large and heavy balloons.
NASA has been using this type of balloon for years, adds Krueger, adding that Google’s now-defunct project and company Loon have further advanced the cutting-edge technology, changing altitudes and wind currents in between. We created an ultra-high pressure balloon that can be maneuvered slowly by using the change in different layers of the atmosphere. “I think China used the same type of super-pressure balloon technology for their platform,” he says. Knowing the unequivocal flight profile of super-pressure balloons (and ensuring that the US-based researchers follow current domestic flight rules), Krueger says domestic air defense radar systems can It concludes that a better distinction should be made between foreign spy balloons and standard research inflatable balloons. future.
For some who want to make high-altitude ballooning a routine activity accessible to everyone, it’s still a cold consolation. Resource coordinator Mike Pappas worries about what new regulations are in store. Over-regulation can easily backfire and become too burdensome, effectively discouraging the same groups most likely to benefit from low-budget balloons: middle school, high school, and college students. He says he will.
“From an educational point of view, balloons [that] EOSS flies help get elementary and high school students interested in science, technology, engineering, and math,” says Pappas. “So [those areas] It will bear the brunt of a drastic reduction in the balloon program.. Future generations of engineers will suffer if programs like ours are canceled due to onerous regulations.
