Project Loon flies AGAIN?

Aviation Notable Activity
1

Project Loon balloon up at 64,000 ft altitude, east of Albuquerque, NM (looks like it started in Santa Fe).

I thought the program closed a couple years ago.

Maybe some agency is using it for something else?

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2

Wondering this myself. My receiver got it near Tulsa and east.

3

Maybe that Chinese spy balloon that was reported earlier this week is sending a spoofed ADSB signal! :rofl::rofl:

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4

I did some further research, and it seems that the US DoD has a contract to use the Loon Balloons

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5

More like the government and the media is pretending that the Loon Balloons are Chinese Spy / WMD balloons.

(Or maybe my Tin hat needs another layer of foil.)

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6

Tracked a Loon Balloon at 67K a couple of days ago (04/08/23, mid afternoon) heading east toward Showlow, Arizona - I had not heard of the project and researched it. I think possibly they are being used in another fashion now; doesnā€™t make sense with Starlink up and running.

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7

Thereā€™s an excellent Facebook page and website ā€œStratoCat balloonsā€. Has a lot of current info on high altitude balloons and launches.

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8

Just spotted one of these balloons off the north east coast of Newfoundland

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IMG_5332828Ɨ1792 347 KB

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I wonder if there is anything ā€˜interestingā€™ going on there. As I understand it, the Loon balloons are under contract to the US Department of Defense.

10

Itā€™s traveled out to sea. Maybe this one got away in the jet stream

11

Just picked up HBAL645 hovering over southeast North Dakotaā€¦

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Yeah, they have been busy lately. There were I think, EIGHT of them up at one time a couple of weeks ago.

They are currently under contract to the Department of Defense to conduct ā€˜domestic surveillanceā€™.

13

Hi,

Thatā€™s not the old Project Loon project, but a different company called Aerostar.

Your hex=AC0A9A HBAL645 is N875TH.

FAA registration for N875TH:
https://registry.faa.gov/AircraftInquiry/Search/NNumberResult?nNumberTxt=N875TH

Technically, it is not a registration, but just a ā€œfee paidā€ reservation holding the N-number registration. They are supposed to complete the actual registration before flying, but this company has a history of flying most of their NxxxTH balloons as ā€œfee paidā€ just like this one.

Their site has some good info.

Aerostar has been flying these since the Project Loon days. A week or two ago, I had a group of 4 of their balloons cross the northern Gulf of Mexico from near Cross City, FL to around Mississippi.

Regards,
-Dan

14

Hi,

I forgot to mention that the ā€œTHā€ in most or all of their FAA registrations likely stands for ThunderHead balloons.

From their site:

"Thunderhead Balloon Systems have made long duration and navigational stratospheric missions a proven reality. By leveraging directional wind patterns at high altitudes, Aerostarā€™s Thunderhead Balloon Systems offer groundbreaking capabilities for navigation and persistence over areas of interest. "

I did a quick check, and the group that crossed the northern Gulf of Mexico was closer to 3 weeks ago. I then looked up the following sequential registrations, but donā€™t remember if the exact count that went by was greater than just those 5.

N871TH
N872TH
N873TH
N874TH
N875TH

Regards,
-Dan

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