{"id":22540,"date":"2025-04-23T18:46:57","date_gmt":"2025-04-24T00:46:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/stratospheric-balloon-cruises-over-southwest-colorado-sparks-curiosity-on-way-to-florida\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:14:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:14:55","slug":"stratospheric-balloon-cruises-over-southwest-colorado-sparks-curiosity-on-way-to-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/stratospheric-balloon-cruises-over-southwest-colorado-sparks-curiosity-on-way-to-florida\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratospheric balloon cruises over Southwest Colorado, sparks curiosity on way to Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"A
A high altitude stratospheric balloon passed over Southwest Colorado Monday morning on its way to Florida. (Aerospace\/Courtesy photo)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

A \u201clighter-than-air\u201d high-altitude balloon flew over Moab and into Southwest Colorado Monday morning, April 22 on its way to Florida.<\/p>\n

When it passed over Hawaii <\/a>last week, people mistook it for some kind of \u201cforeign matter,\u201d perhaps something extraterrestrial or a strange kind of weather pattern.<\/p>\n

But all it is is a big ol\u2019 balloon, and HBAL717 is trackable at flightradar24.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It flies unmanned in the stratosphere, which is the second layer of Earth\u2019s atmosphere, anywhere from six to 31 miles (11 to 50 km) above the surface.<\/p>\n

According to flightradar24.com, the balloon is flying at 65,000 feet \u2013 more than double the elevation of Mount Everest \u2013 at speeds ranging from 20 to 30 mph.<\/p>\n

Aerostar is the company that launched it, and for 65 years now, it has crafted stratospheric balloons and airships, partnering with NASA, Google and even the U.S. Air Force to \u201cexceed dynamic missions,\u201d according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The Thunderhead Balloon System that rubberneckers in Hawaii hoped was aliens first took flight on Feb. 6 from Hurley, South Dakota.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s \u201can internally funded research and development flight to test features of our flight control and navigation system,\u201d said Anastasia Quanbeck, the culture and communications director at Aerostar, in an email.<\/p>\n

Aerospace\u2019s balloons have a range of capabilities, like \u201cextending communications across wide distances, as well as conducting environmental monitoring, earth observation, and scientific research,\u201d said Quanbeck.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not the first \u2013 or last \u2013 time one of their balloons has visited the Centennial State.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith hundreds of flights every year and more than 2 million hours in the stratosphere, Aerostar flies high altitude balloon systems all over the U.S. and to locations around the world,\u201d Quanbeck said.\u201d We often fly over Colorado on our way to and from other places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recently, the company broke a world record for flying 336 days in the stratosphere with one high-altitude balloon; in that time, it traveled more than 80,500 nautical miles, according to a press release<\/a> detailing the achievement.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdvances from the commercial sector in the areas of navigation, solar technology, batteries, beyond line-of-sight communication, and software have increased the operating range and endurance of high-altitude balloons and expanded potential use-cases,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy leveraging directional wind patterns at high altitudes, Aerostar\u2019s Thunderhead Balloon Systems offer groundbreaking capabilities for navigation and persistence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"A
A map detailing the high altitude balloon\u2019s path from Colorado into Kansas about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. Screenshot from FlightRadar24<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Balloon caused rumors to fly as it passed over Hawaii<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-22540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22540"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77754,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22540\/revisions\/77754"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22540"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=22540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}