High Altitude Unmanned Balloon Passes Near DC, New Jersey

A high-altitude unmanned balloon once operated by Loon, formerly an Alphabet subsidiary and now registered to Raven Aerostar as “N254TH,” traveled just north of the Baltimore-Washington, DC, airspace at 64,500 feet, moving east at 34 mph towards New Jersey.

Data from FlightAware indicates that N254TH launched from Dangel Airport in South Dakota on Monday and has since traversed the eastern half of the US, now making its way into Delaware and soon New Jersey

Zooming in…

Balloon website Stratocat provided more details about the balloon under Loon’s prior ownership:

Project Loon was an initiative to establish a network of high altitude unmanned balloons to provide Internet connectivity in underserved parts of the world or during disaster recovery efforts. The project started in 2011 and became public in 2013 as part of Google’s research and development of new technologies carried out through X Development LLC.

Loon, formerly an Alphabet subsidiary, was shuttered in 2021—the project aimed to provide high-speed internet to remote parts of the world. However, Elon Musk’s Starlink has largely taken over that role with its low Earth orbit satellites.

Meanwhile, on X…

Oh JFC…

HBAL714 is registered in the US to Raven Aerostar as N254TH.

It’s not a fucking Chinese balloon. pic.twitter.com/C5xyhY61ea

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) December 18, 2024

This is not a Chinese balloon.

Do some fucking research.

This is a Raven Aerostar balloon registered in the US as N254TH. They’re a DoD contractor researching the uses of balloons.

— TheIntelFrog (@TheIntelFrog) December 18, 2024

In addition to drones, residents of New Jersey will now have a giant balloon to speculate about.