An Illinois group says one of its pico balloons is "missing in action" after being last detected in Alaska and the loss of signal happened around the same time the White House said a U.S. military fighter jet shot down an unknown object flying off the remote northern coast.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a group of hobbyists launching and tracking pico balloons, said its "Pico Balloon K9YO" last reported in the early morning hours of Feb. 11, or the afternoon hours of Feb. 10 in local time, near Hagemeister Island, a remote and uninhabited island off the southwest coast in Alaska.
Pico ballooning, according to the brigade, is part of "Amateur Radio" also known as "ham radio" or just "hams."
"We’re licensed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) allowing us to communicate to other Hams throughout the world," their website states. "Pico meaning small, we send a small transmitter, with GPS tracking and antenna on a balloon filled with Hydrogen, rising to 47,000 feet, and travelling with the speed of the Jetstream. As we travel, our GPS is able to locate our current location, and other information is gathered depending on what chips we have on our transmitter while using other programs to gather other inflight information."
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The same day their balloon lost signal, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an unknown object was downed in a region further north because it was flying at about 40,000 feet and posed a “reasonable threat” to the safety of civilian flights. Flight predictions have indicated the brigade's balloon may have been in the vicinity of this region at the time.
While the brigade has not yet made any connection to the object shot down by the government and their balloon, officials did note that the object was much smaller than the massive suspected Chinese spy balloon downed by Air Force fighter jets off the coast of South Carolina days earlier.
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In the days following, two additional objects were shot down from the sky, one in Canada and another over Lake Huron.
On Monday, the White House announced earnestly there was no indication of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity.” By Wednesday, U.S. officials said they were still working to locate the wreckage from the three objects outside of the South Carolina balloon, but that they expected all three to be unrelated to surveillance efforts.
“The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby.
On Friday, the U.S. finished efforts to recover the remnants of the large balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, and analysis of the debris so far reinforces conclusions that it was a Chinese spy balloon, officials said.
While the military is confident the balloon shot down off South Carolina was a surveillance airship operated by China, the Biden administration has admitted that the three smaller objects were likely civilian-owned balloons that were targeted during the heightened response, after U.S. homeland defense radars were recalibrated to detect slower moving airborne items.
The officials also said the search for the small airborne object that was shot down over Lake Huron has stopped, and nothing has been recovered. The U.S. and Canada have also failed to recover any debris so far from the other two objects which were shot down over the Yukon and northern Alaska.
Due to the objects' small size and the remote areas where they were shot down, officials acknowledge that recovering any debris is difficult and probably unlikely. Those last two searches, however, have not been formally called off.
With no debris to confirm, the brigade noted that it remains unclear if the object shot down in Alaska was in fact their balloon.
"As has been widely reported, no part of the object shot down by the US Air Force jet over the Yukon territory has been recovered. Until that happens and that object is confirmed to be an identifiable pico balloon, any assertions or claims that our ballon [sic] was involved in that incident are not supported by facts," the group said in a release Friday.
They added that it is not uncommon for their balloons to go "missing in action." In fact, since it was launched in October 2022, the brigade's K9YO balloon has lost transmission several times, including for one period as long as 30 days.
"It is not unusual for significant periods of time to elapse between received transmissions," the group said. "This is due to a variety of factors."
The group said it was "excited to see the recent interest in our hobby" amidst the news.
"The goal of our group is to share factual and technically correct information about pico balloons and the flights of those that we launch. Our desire is to continue pursuing that goal in the midst of all this," they said, adding that they have since disabled commenting on their website because "the volume was overwhelming for our small group."
