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ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) - A mysterious object that was seen floating miles over Southcentral Alaska on Tuesday is now being determined as a domestic balloon.
The spherical-looking object appeared in the clear skies above the city Tuesday morning, leaving questions as to what it was.
The National Weather Service told Alaska’s News Source that it did not belong to them, and couldn’t confirm what it was.
Reports of the object came in from the Anchorage hillside to Eagle River.
FlightRadar24, a website that tracks realtime flights of registered aircraft, showed a “high altitude balloon” at roughly 66,000 feet in the atmosphere, higher than most commercial jets.
The registration number on the object listed it as belonging to Aerostar, a company based in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, that uses “stratospheric balloon technology.”
The company’s webpage claims that its “lighter-than-air” technology has been used by NASA, Google, the U.S. Air Force and others.
When reached for comment, officials with Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson explained that a special operation known as Arctic Edge 2025 was underway to help beef up Arctic security and that the public could expect to hear and see more air traffic.
A JBER official told Alaska’s News Source that the high-altitude balloon was launched from the Malemute Drop Zone near Eagle River by Aerostar.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) also put out a release last week specifying that Arctic Edge 2025 will be active in Alaska through the month of August.
Alaska’s News Source spoke with Russ Vanderweff, the vice president of Stratospheric Solutions, who explained what the balloon is and its capabilities.
The device is a Thunderhead High-Altitude balloon, he said. It’s designed to fly for extremely long distances; the company recently set the world record of 336 days of sustained flight.
It works similarly to a hot air balloon, but can be controlled remotely using gas canisters that are attached to it. The company has seen increased demand for its product and has shown it off to the likes of NASA and Google.
“We did a demonstration flight with NASA and the National Interagency Fire Center last year, where we were providing LTE cellular coverage to people, firefighters, cell phones in the field, and then the sensing in that case was an infrared camera so they could monitor the spread of the fire in real time and have that information available on their phone,” Vanderweff said, explaining the way the technology has evolved.
“Over the last 15 years or so ... we started working with Google on Project Loon. They were using balloons to provide cellular coverage in sub-Saharan Africa and rural South America and other places where there was no other alternative.”
JBER also said Arctic Edge 25 is a NORAD and US-NORTHCOM-led Arctic-readiness exercise that “also conducts Joint and Service-level experimentation and technology demonstrations in the Arctic.”
“Resolute Force Pacific, RED FLAG-Alaska 25-3, Arctic Edge and Northern Edge will create more noise for surrounding communities and the Joint Pacific-Alaska Range Complex,” the base said in a prepared statement.
This is a developing story. Check back for more updates as we learn more about it.
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