Last Saturday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) shot down an object over the Yukon – one of four mysterious objects shot down over the US and Canada this month.
On the same day, February 11, a small hobby club — the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) — received its final transmission from one of its pico balloons on its seventh trip around the world. The balloon was near Hagemeister Island, off the southwest corner of Alaska.
“Back then, and as we often do, we used NOAA’s HYSPLIT model to predict where the balloon might go from there,” the club said in a blog post on its website on Friday. The forecast? That it would hover over the Yukon.
Now, NIBBB has declared the balloon “missing in action”, leading to speculation that it may be the same balloon that the RCMP was searching for on the ground in the Yukon with assistance from Canadian forces.
The RCMP announced late Friday that it was suspending search efforts in light of “the snowfall that has occurred, the decreasing likelihood of the object being found and the current belief that the object is not tied to a scenario warranting exceptional search efforts.” .
The NIBBB’s statement also raises questions about whether the mysterious objects in the sky are weather balloons launched by hobbyists.
“There’s talk in the amateur community that one of those balloons that was shot down was one of those balloons,” said Phil McBride, president of Radio Amateurs of Canada.
“I can’t say if that’s the case or not, but there are a lot of rumours.”
NIBBB isn’t pointing fingers just yet.
“As has been widely reported, no part of the object shot down by the US Air Force jet over Yukon Territory has been recovered. Until this happens and it is confirmed that this object is an identifiable pico-balloon, there are no claims or allegations that our balloon was the one involved in this incident are not supported by facts,” the club said in his blog post.
CBC News contacted NIBBB for an interview.
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Of the four objects shot down over North American skies over the past month, only one has been identified. China says the 200-foot balloon launched off the coast of South Carolina was used to monitor weather conditions, but Washington says it was a surveillance balloon with a massive undercarriage containing electronics.
The U.S. said Friday it had completed recovery efforts to collect sensors and other debris from the balloon, and the final debris was being taken to an FBI lab in Virginia for analysis.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden said US intelligence agencies were still trying to learn more about the three unidentified objects: one that was shot down over Alaska, one over Canada and a third that crashed into Lake Huron. The government said they were shot down because they posed a threat to civil aviation.
“We don’t yet know exactly what those three objects were, but at this point there’s nothing to suggest they were linked to the Chinese spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from another country,” Biden said.
Also on Thursday, RCMP said in a news release that they are suspending searches for debris in Lake Huron due to several factors, “including deteriorating weather and the low likelihood of recovery.”
Late Friday, the U.S. military’s Northern Command said it had also ended search operations at Lake Huron and Alaska because it had “discovered no debris.”
A question of “Can I do this?”
In Canada, there are large numbers of people who use radio equipment to get high-altitude balloons airborne, whether they’re individuals, private companies or STEM programs in schools, said McBride of Radio Amateurs of Canada.
“Sometimes it’s just a question of ‘Can I do that?'” McBride said. As an example, he notes that some schools send up balloons to take photos from high altitudes.
“A big part of it is experimentation and research,” he said.
He also notes that ballooning is growing in popularity as the technology becomes more accessible to the average person.
“Anyone can do it.”
