still unclear
The object that fell over Canada on Saturday was described by the Canadian Defense Minister as a balloon. But two other objects can be something else entirely.
For example, a US official described the object shot over Lake Huron on Sunday as an octagon with wires dangling from it.
Alex Kostinsky, a physicist at Michigan Tech University, said, “Pentagon shooting an octagon? It can’t be a balloon, because a balloon by definition has a soft boundary and therefore must be smooth.”
Scientists are conducting field programs to deploy large balloons and rockets from warehouses and launchpads at the Poker Flat Research Range in Alaska, where one of the objects was shot down, said John Walsh, an Arctic climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. hosted.
“But I don’t think there’s one of those field programs going on right now, so it’s unclear what happened in the last week or so,” Walsh said.
Little is known about the object that fell over Alaska on Friday, which a Pentagon spokesman described as the size of a small car and said it was hit by a missile about 40,000 feet above the ground.
Some large consumer or commercial drones with propellers can be as large as a compact car and in rare cases reach 40,000 feet, although the US Federal Aviation Administration prohibits consumer drones from flying above 400 feet.
According to NASA, research drones deployed in arctic regions are sometimes preferred over satellites for a closer, longer-term view of the effects of melting ice and sea level rise, but those aircraft can only be in the air for a few hours a day. are limited.
Former NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen, who oversaw the group before retiring in December, said the drones were among the items examined by a NASA study team formed last year to help the Pentagon understand unknown aerial phenomena. it was done.
Following the Chinese balloon incident, the US military has adjusted the filters it uses to check radar data, allowing it to see smaller, slower-moving objects. This would inevitably mean more sightings and possibly further shootings.