The unidentified light bulb-shaped object in the sky west of Sedona, that puzzled residents for several hours on Friday, Aug. 30, was a helium balloon floating at 55,000 to 60,000 feet.
The 400-foot-tall balloon, designed to carry payloads into the stratosphere, was being controlled from Tucson by World View, an aerospace company based in that city.
While not an alien spacecraft, the device is more than just a “weather balloon.”
World View calls the craft a “navigable and persistent stratospheric flight vehicle,” branded as a Stratollite, and World View markets it as a platform “for persistent imaging of remote and specific areas of interest.”
The balloon was launched from Page Airport on Aug. 27 and as of press time is still in flight, currently floating above northern Nevada. Tom Pirrone, senior vice president for business at World View, said the balloon is on an “operational test flight.
“We’re flying around to do testing of the maneuverability of the vehicle as part of our development, and we’re also testing against some altitude control and some duration objectives that are part of our test program.”
He also said the balloon is not carrying any cameras or other forms of surveillance equipment.
Pirrone seemed surprised that Sedonans could see the balloon.
“It’s going to be pretty hard to see,” he said. “Folks are only going to see it on accident, or if they know where it is to look and to use binoculars or a telescope or something like that. Otherwise you won’t just be able to see it generally. I mean you might see a white dot up there, but it will be very hard to see the vehicle.”
But the balloon was nonetheless visible to many Sedonans for about three hours before it drifted south and west toward Prescott and Chino Valley.
Pirrone says the balloon is navigable by changing altitude within its operational altitude of between 50,000 and 65,000 thousand feet to catch winds moving in the desired direction.
“In that range of altitude, there’s winds flowing in all compass directions… you can pretty much find winds to take you in any direction within that range,” he said.
Pirrone says that World View flies above the airspace controlled by the FAA, but their balloons are tracked by the agency. People can locate and track the balloons on public airplane tracking websites on the internet.
