A “lighter-than-air” high-altitude balloon flew over Moab and into Southwest Colorado Monday morning, April 22 on its way to Florida.
When it passed over Hawaii last week, people mistook it for some kind of “foreign matter,” perhaps something extraterrestrial or a strange kind of weather pattern.
But all it is is a big ol’ balloon, and HBAL717 is trackable at flightradar24.com.
It flies unmanned in the stratosphere, which is the second layer of Earth’s atmosphere, anywhere from six to 31 miles (11 to 50 km) above the surface.
According to flightradar24.com, the balloon is flying at 65,000 feet – more than double the elevation of Mount Everest – at speeds ranging from 20 to 30 mph.
Aerostar is the company that launched it, and for 65 years now, it has crafted stratospheric balloons and airships, partnering with NASA, Google and even the U.S. Air Force to “exceed dynamic missions,” according to its website.
The Thunderhead Balloon System that rubberneckers in Hawaii hoped was aliens first took flight on Feb. 6 from Hurley, South Dakota.
It’s “an internally funded research and development flight to test features of our flight control and navigation system,” said Anastasia Quanbeck, the culture and communications director at Aerostar, in an email.
Aerospace’s balloons have a range of capabilities, like “extending communications across wide distances, as well as conducting environmental monitoring, earth observation, and scientific research,” said Quanbeck.
It’s not the first – or last – time one of their balloons has visited the Centennial State.
“With hundreds of flights every year and more than 2 million hours in the stratosphere, Aerostar flies high altitude balloon systems all over the U.S. and to locations around the world,” Quanbeck said.” We often fly over Colorado on our way to and from other places.”
Recently, the company broke a world record for flying 336 days in the stratosphere with one high-altitude balloon; in that time, it traveled more than 80,500 nautical miles, according to a press release detailing the achievement.
“Advances from the commercial sector in the areas of navigation, solar technology, batteries, beyond line-of-sight communication, and software have increased the operating range and endurance of high-altitude balloons and expanded potential use-cases,” she said.
“By leveraging directional wind patterns at high altitudes, Aerostar's Thunderhead Balloon Systems offer groundbreaking capabilities for navigation and persistence.”
