Satelite Lands in Field

Sattelite Lands in Field

www.newschannel10.com

A weather research balloon used to collect valuable information is now heading back home to New Mexico after landing in the Texas panhandle Wednesday night.

(visit the link for the full news article)



[edit on 4-10-2007 by Eighty59]

[edit on 4-10-2007 by Eighty59]

I saw this on the evening news and had to post. At first it was reported to be a fallen satellite and now apparently, it's simply a "research balloon". If you watch the video (which I hope is the one they aired on television. I own a Mac so I can't view it :/), it doesn't seem to be damaged in any way. Falling from such great heights, you'd think it'd be a little messed up. All in all a fairly interesting story.

www.newschannel10.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Well it is kind of interesting, but I just cant help but remember the last time the Army told us, the public, that a weather balloon had crashed in New Mexico.

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First off, here's some video help for MAC users.

I watched the videos - looks like a big 15 ft. tall structure that houses a solar telescope. It has big blue solar panels on it. The video mentions that the device was sent up from somewhere in New Mexico on a huge balloon measuring almost 300 ft. in diameter and rose to nearly 120,000 ft. in altitude.

The NASA dude said that the landing site in the farmer's field was a "chosen landing spot" and that the project management could specify a landing site within a very small radius. Seems odd that they would specifically pick this farmer's field to land in... and why wouldn't they tell the farmer in advance and have a team out there waiting on it to land?

Interesting story at least.

[edit on 10/4/2007 by damajikninja]