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Hot air balloon expert explains the challenges of shooting down suspected Chinese spy balloons • TechCrunch

Earlier this month, a suspected Chinese spy balloon drifted over much of the continental United States before an Army F-22 fighter jet shot it down off the east coast. The event put a huge strain on already fragile US-China relations, with China insisting that the erroneous balloon was simply collecting weather data. Beijing called the shooting down of the balloon an “overreaction”.

The incident brought unexpected attention to stratospheric balloon technology. High altitude balloons themselves are not new: In fact, thousands of balloons operate in the stratosphere every day, Near Space Laboratory CEO Rema Matevosyan explained in an interview with TechCrunch. But it’s not every day someone gets shot from the sky, like Top Gun.

Near Space Labs, an American company founded in 2017, operates a fleet of commercial high-altitude hot air balloons. Near Space’s balloons — as well as the thousands of other earth-observing and weather balloons currently hovering around the stratosphere — are equipped with a variety of payloads, depending on their mission purposes. Matevosyan says the ability to swap payloads makes the balloon a remarkably versatile platform for Earth observation.

She was anticipating what information the Chinese balloon might have picked up — “wait for the data to be declassified on the sensors,” she suggested — but she noted that the Chinese balloon China and its payload is significantly larger than that of the Chinese airship. Thousands of weather balloons carry atmospheric sensors. She said the size of the payload on the Chinese balloon, which US officials say is equivalent to the size of three school shuttle buses, may suggest that there are multiple types of sensors.

There are also challenges when shooting down an object at such a height. The stratosphere is much thinner than the lower regions of the atmosphere and although you can puncture a balloon with a needle if you get close enough – it can’t get that close due to altitude limitations commerce. Military jets like the F-22 are not simply designed to carry missiles, Matevosyan explains, but their unique shape is optimized for aerodynamic efficiency, speed and ratio. lift force/maximum mass. According to the Department of Defense, the F-22 fired the Sidewinder missile at an altitude of 58,000 feet; The balloon is operating at an altitude of about 60,000-65,000 feet, so the rocket doesn’t have to travel too far through the stratosphere.

“The air is very thin,” said Matevosyan. “The stratosphere is closer to the atmosphere of Mars than to the atmosphere of Earth. It’s really complicated to navigate. […] You really need a plane because you need very stable platforms to be able to launch rockets.”

The big question — one that neither TechCrunch nor Matevosyan can answer — is, why shoot down this balloon? Why now? The Pentagon speak that “instances of this type of ballooning activity have been previously observed in the past few years.” Undoubtedly, the US spying on China in turn. Therefore, many people still wonder why Washington decided that now is the time to draw a line in the sand. Whether this action will escalate relations between the two countries, or ultimately just another move in the game of chess between the superpowers, remains to be seen.



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