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| Sailors recover a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C. on Feb. 5, 2023. (Tyler Thompson/U.S. Navy via The New York Times) |
My Daily Kona has a report on the Chinese balloon that explains the story a bit better:
The heat generated by the electronic systems appeared to be enough to provide a targeting lock for the imaging infrared seeker in the AIM-9X. The height of the target—60,000-65,000 ft.—still required the missile to ascend several thousand feet from a launch point at 58,000 ft., a senior defense official says.
3 comments:
Launched from 58 kilofeet because the F22 cannot fly any higher
when carrying external payload ???
In the mid-sixties I worked at Tufts University on balloon projects. The head of the electrical engineering dept was also chairman of the national balloon research committee. He got his jollies by awarding someone like Princeton, MIT, or Cal Tech multi million dollar grants to do something then we’d do the same project in parallel for a half million. This is before satellites were common or available for anything nonmilitary.
We’d build an aluminum framed package with a 12, and 24 inch gold plated beryllium mirrors telescope, and an electrically operated 35mm camera to take infrared pictures of the Moon and Venus.
Launched from Alamogordo, NM, the sun would heat the balloon and it would drift east. At night it would cool and sink catching the westerly flow cross country. It would follow that routine for a month before a signal to cut loose the balloon. They did have one get away coming down in Spain 24 hours later.
Most Radio Amateur pico-balloons are easy to find if they are in radio range of a tracking station:
amateur.sondehub.org
The site takes about six seconds to load, then you can explore the map and click on balloon icons to see more info.
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