A hobby group in Illinois has reported one of its balloons “missing in action” near where the U.S. military shot down an unknown aerial object last week.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, in a blog post that was reported by Aviation Week, said on Tuesday that one of its balloons was last spotted at 12:48 a.m. on Saturday along an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska. It had been in flight for 123 days and 18 hours when the hobbyists lost track of it.
WHITE HOUSE SAYS NO INDICATION THREE OBJECTS SHOT DOWN WERE CHINESE SURVEILLANCE
"For now we are calling Pico Balloon K9YO Missing in Action," the blog post said.
“I have no information for you from NORAD on the objects,” Air Force Col. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokeswoman from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told Politico. “I understand [the] FBI spoke with that hobby group, and I expect the [National Security Council] task force to have more on the potential identification of the objects.”
The group flies pico balloons, which are filled with hydrogen and contain a GPS tracker. Their balloons rise to roughly 47,000 feet, and the specific one was last tracked to be floated around 40,000 feet high.
Over the last two weeks or so, the military has shot down four different objects that had crossed U.S. airspace. The first one, which was shot down on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina, was a Chinese surveillance drone, while the other three, according to the intelligence community, are likely tied to some commercial or benign purpose.
The NIBBB's missing balloon tracks with when the Air Force shot down an object over the Yukon last Saturday. Another was shot down off the coast of Alaska near the Arctic Circle the day before, while the day after, the U.S. shot down an unknown object over Lake Huron.
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"We don't yet know exactly what these three objects were," President Joe Biden said Thursday. "But nothing right now suggests they're related to China's spy balloon program, or there were surveillance vehicles from any other country. The intelligence committee's current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research."
U.S. officials have said gathering additional information from the three unidentified objects will be difficult because the recovery efforts will be that way.