{"id":32822,"date":"2023-02-04T01:36:00","date_gmt":"2023-02-04T01:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=32822"},"modified":"2023-02-07T02:41:58","modified_gmt":"2023-02-07T02:41:58","slug":"chinese-spy-balloon-over-the-us-an-aerospace-expert-explains-how-the-balloons-work-and-what-they-can-see","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/chinese-spy-balloon-over-the-us-an-aerospace-expert-explains-how-the-balloons-work-and-what-they-can-see\/","title":{"rendered":"Chinese spy balloon over the US: An aerospace expert explains how the balloons work and what they can\u00a0see"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Iain Boyd<\/a>, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. military shot down<\/a> what U.S. officials called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023. Officials said that the U.S. Navy planned to recover the debris<\/a>, which is in shallow water.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. and Canada tracked the balloon as it crossed the Aleutian Islands, passed over Western Canada and entered U.S. airspace over Idaho. Officials of the U.S. Department of Defense confirmed on Feb. 2, 2023, that the military was tracking the balloon<\/a> as it flew over the continental U.S. at an altitude of about 60,000 feet, including over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. The base houses the 341st Missile Wing, which operates nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day, Chinese officials acknowledged that the balloon was theirs<\/a> but denied it was intended for spying or meant to enter U.S. airspace. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the balloon\u2019s incursion led him to cancel his trip to Beijing<\/a>. He had been scheduled to meet with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang on Feb. 5 and 6.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Pentagon has reported that a second suspected Chinese balloon<\/a> was seen over Latin America. On Feb. 4, officials told reporters that a third Chinese surveillance balloon was operating somewhere else in the world, and that the balloons are part of a Chinese military surveillance program<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monitoring an adversary from a balloon dates back to 1794, when the French used a hot air balloon<\/a> to track Austrian and Dutch troops in the Battle of Fleurus. We asked aerospace engineer Iain Boyd<\/a> of the University of Colorado Boulder to explain how spy balloons work and why anyone would use one in the 21st century.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a spy balloon?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A spy balloon is literally a gas-filled balloon that is flying quite high in the sky, more or less where we fly commercial airplanes. It has some sophisticated cameras and imaging technology on it, and it\u2019s pointing all of those instruments down at the ground. It\u2019s collecting information through photography and other imaging of whatever is going on down on the ground below it. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/WglPIjZeC58?wmode=transparent&start=0 A high-altitude Chinese balloon drifted over the U.S., entering over Montana and moving over the central portion of the country, causing the U.S. to send fighter jets into the air and triggering an angry response from the U.S. government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why would someone want to use a spy balloon instead of just using spy satellites?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Satellites are the preferred method of spying from overhead. Spy satellites are above us today, typically at one of two different types of orbit<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is called low Earth orbit<\/a>, and, as the name suggests, those satellites are relatively close to the ground. But they\u2019re still several hundred miles above us. For imaging and taking photographs, the closer you are to something, the more clearly you can see it, and this applies to spying as well. The satellites that are in low Earth orbit have the advantage that they\u2019re closer to the Earth so they\u2019re able to see things more clearly than satellites that are farther away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The disadvantage these low Earth orbit satellites have is that they are continually moving around the Earth. It takes them about 90 minutes to do one orbit around the Earth. That turns out to be pretty fast in terms of taking clear photographs of what\u2019s going on below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second type of satellite orbit is called geosynchronous orbit<\/a>, and that\u2019s much farther away. It has the disadvantage that it\u2019s harder to see things clearly when you\u2019re very, very far away. But they have the advantage of what we call persistence, allowing satellites to capture images continuously<\/a>. In those orbits, you\u2019re essentially overlooking the exact same piece of ground on the Earth\u2019s surface all the time because the satellite moves in exactly the same way the earth rotates \u2013 it rotates at the exact same speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a<\/a>
A U.S. satellite photo showing a Soviet submarine in port in 1982. National Reconnaissance Office<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A balloon in some ways gets the best of those. These balloons are much, much closer to the ground than any of the satellites, so they can see even more clearly. And then, of course, balloons are moving, but they\u2019re moving relatively slowly, so they also have a degree of persistence. However, spying is not usually done these days with balloons because they are a relatively easy target and are not completely controllable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What types of surveillance are spy balloons capable of?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know what\u2019s on this particular spy balloon, but it\u2019s likely to be different kinds of cameras collecting different types of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These days, imaging is conducted across different regions of the electromagnetic spectrum<\/a>. Humans see in a certain range of this spectrum, the visible spectrum. And so if you have a camera and you take a photograph of your dog, that\u2019s a visible photograph. That\u2019s one of the things spy aircraft do. They take regular photographs, although they have very good zoom capabilities to be able to magnify what they\u2019re seeing quite a lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But you can also gather different kinds of information in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. Another fairly well-known one is infrared. If it\u2019s nighttime, a camera operating in the visible part of the spectrum is not going to show you anything. It\u2019s all going to be dark. But an infrared camera can pick up things from heat in the dark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do these balloons navigate?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most of these balloons literally go where the wind blows. There can be a little bit of navigation, but there are certainly not people aboard them. They are at the mercy of whatever the weather is. They sometimes have guiding apparatus on them that change a balloon\u2019s altitude to catch winds going in particular directions. According to reports, U.S. officials said the Chinese surveillance balloon had propellers to help steer it<\/a>. If this is confirmed, it means that its operator would have much more control over the path of the balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the limits to a nation\u2019s airspace? At what altitude does it become space and anybody\u2019s right to be there?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

There is an internationally accepted boundary called the K\u00e1rm\u00e1n Line<\/a> at 62 miles (100 kilometers) altitude. This balloon is well below that, so it is absolutely, definitely in U.S. airspace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which countries are known to be using spy balloons?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Pentagon has had programs over the last few decades studying what can be done with balloons that couldn\u2019t be done in the past. Maybe they\u2019re bigger, maybe they can go higher in the atmosphere so they\u2019re more difficult to shoot down or disable. Maybe they could be more persistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The broad interest in this incident illustrates its unusual nature. Few people would expect any country to be actively using spy balloons<\/a> these days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The U.S. flew many balloons over the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s, and those were eventually replaced by the high-altitude spy airplanes, the U-2s<\/a>, and they were subsequently replaced by satellites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"a<\/a>
Project Moby Dick was an early Cold War-era effort by the U.S. to monitor the Soviet Union using high-altitude balloons. United States Air Force Public Affairs<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m sure a number of countries around the world have periodically gone back to reevaluate: Are there other things we could do now with balloons that we couldn\u2019t do before? Do they close some gaps we have from satellites and airplanes?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does that say about the nature of this balloon, which China confirmed is theirs?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

China has complained for many years about the U.S. spying<\/a> on China through satellites, through ships. And China is also well known for engaging in somewhat provocative behavior<\/a>, like in the South China Sea, sailing close to other nations\u2019 boundaries and saber-rattling. I think it falls into that category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The balloon doesn\u2019t pose any real threat to the U.S. I think sometimes China is just experimenting to see how far they can push things. This isn\u2019t really very advanced technology. It\u2019s not serving any real military purpose. I think it\u2019s much more likely some kind of political message.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article has been updated to include news that the balloon has been shot down by the U.S. military.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Iain Boyd<\/a>, Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iain Boyd, University of Colorado Boulder The U.S. military shot down what U.S. officials called a Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023. Officials said that the U.S. Navy planned to recover the debris, which is in shallow water. The U.S. and Canada tracked the balloon as it crossed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":32823,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3410],"tags":[13464,13466,145,7388,13463,13465,12148,255],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32822"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32822"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32849,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32822\/revisions\/32849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}