A few weeks ago, a large, high altitude balloon carrying a large payload of Chinese surveillance equipment was shot down by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor using an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. The F-22 was scrambled from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia, the downed balloon landed offshore in South Carolina, and an intensive intelligence salvage operation began immediately. This was a large, likely multiple ton, balloon with a substantial array of solar cells, navigational and directional capability, and electronic packages. Because my wife and I own a beach house in North Carolina, near the South Carolina border, I received local warnings to report and deliver any floating debris to the authorities.
In response, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, canceled his planned trip to Beijing, and Sino-American geopolitical relations, already strained, sank even further, with public accusations and recriminations flying fast and furiously. The resulting consternation ignited political posturing by pundits across the political spectrum, which, in turn, led to strident calls for a public statement from the U.S. President.
How could this happen? Why wasn’t the balloon detected earlier? Why was it allowed to drift across the continental United States before being shot down? Members of the U.S. Congress wanted answers, and they got them via classified national security briefings. Meanwhile, NORAD increased its aerial and near-space surveillance, given heightened national awareness and concern about other objects in the sky.
International law is clear that satellite overflights of a country (i.e., from space) are allowed. Conversely, countries have the complete right to control the airspace over their territory, though international law is a bit uncertain about the rules at very high altitudes. As a practical matter, might makes right; if you can shoot it down over your territory, you have the right to do so. (Remember the history of the U-2 and SR-71 spy planes and note that the aerial photograph of the balloon above was taken from a U-2.) Relatedly, radio transmissions are controlled by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) treaty, as part of the United Nations.
Putting aside the very real and important national security questions behind the Chinese balloon and the calculations and mis-calculations that led to its path over the United States, the public hysteria and political ennui brought to mind the West German band Nena’s song, Neunundneunzig Luftballons (99 Air Balloons), which became an international hit in 1983 as an anti-war protest. It’s a poignant and melancholy Cold War story of a group of air balloons accidently triggering a 99-year global war, leaving only devastation in its wake. (You can find it on YouTube, and the German lyrics are just as haunting today as they were forty years ago.)
Original German English Translation
Neunundneunzig Jahre Krieg Ninety-nine Years of War
Ließen keinen Platz für Sieger Left no room for winners
Kriegsminister gibt's nicht mehr There is no longer a Minister of War
Und auch keine Düsenflieger And also no jet planes
Heute zieh' ich meine Runden Today I'm doing my rounds
Seh' die Welt in Trümmern liegen See the world in ruins
Hab' 'n Luftballon gefunden Found a balloon
Denk' an dich und lass' ihn fliegen Think of yourself and let him fly
An English version of the song, entitled 99 Red Balloons, was released shortly thereafter, with somewhat different lyrics, changed to scan with the original melody, and with a more American-centric story. However, many felt it lacked the punch and ennui of the German original, and it failed to achieve the same chart success. My always limited German language skills have atrophied with time, but I am inclined to agree.
But Wait, There Are More!
In the wake of the balloon shootdown, questions were asked; fingers were pointed; answers were demanded. Were there other, heretofore undetected, balloons floating over the United States and Canada? It turned out the answer was yes, and UFOs, literally – unidentified, flying objects – were back in the news. Soon, an unidentified balloon was reported to be drifting over Alaska and heading into the Canadian Yukon, followed by another over Lake Huron, the latter described as “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it.”
After diplomatic consultations between the U.S. and Canada, both were shot also down by the U.S. Air Force. (Technical aside: One should be impressed at NORAD’s surveillance capability, which can identify extremely small objects in the large airspace over North America.)
Were aliens in flying saucers involved? Was North America under threat? Was there a new Cold War “balloon gap,” analogous to the infamous “missile gap?” Inquiring minds wanted to know.
In a “you can’t make this stuff up” farce, a comedic mashup of fiction and reality – Dr. Strangelove (“You can’t fight in here. This is the War Room!”), Neunundneunzig Luftballons, and national security fears – the news was soon filled with speculation that the United States may have used a $100M advanced fighter jet and $500K missile to shoot down a $250 amateur science project, a pico-balloon carrying a ~10 gram, extremely low power amateur “ham” radio transmitter. (See Hobby Club’s Missing Balloon Feared Shot Down By USAF.)
The group potentially responsible for a balloon traversing America’s airspace is – wait for it – the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB), a group of pico-balloon amateur radio and science enthusiasts whose club was named in homage to the 2009 animated movie Up. If you are thinking these people hardly look like a threat, you would be right; the NIBBB notes that the club’s youngest member is only eleven years old.
One of their balloons, with amateur radio call sign K9YO-15 (balloons use the FCC call sign of the owner and a distinguishing number), was launched from Libertyville, Illinois on October 10th, 2022 and had circumnavigated the Earth multiple times before the club lost contact with it. The balloon’s last reported position was at 38,910 feet off the coast of Alaska on February 10th, 2023. The NOAA HYSPLIT wind model projected the balloon to be over the Yukon on February 11, 2023.
On that same day, NORAD downed an unidentified airborne object in the Yukon. The Pentagon issued a press release, and the Canadians searched briefly for the downed fragments but found nothing.
However, given the small size of the balloon and the remote environment, it is unlikely that any debris will ever be found, leaving it uncertain if K9YO-15 was indeed the object shot down. The NIBBB responded with equanimity as well, noting:
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 balloon was involved in that incident are not supported by facts.
Even as the klieg lights of sudden and unexpected fame can be harsh and unforgiving, the NIBBB website shares the group’s passion for pico-balloons and amateur radio, including detailed construction details and a bill of materials.
That’s quite the story, with lots of jargon. Let’s deconstruct this just a bit, starting with pico-balloons.
That’s My Science Project
What’s a pico-balloon, you say? As the name suggests, it is a very small balloon, such as the Mylar kind filled with helium one might purchase from a hobby store or a florist shop. As anyone who has brought one to a birthday or graduation party knows, they can be purchased for a few tens of dollars, and are at most a few feet in diameter.
Most such balloons are soon discarded, though a few escape, intentionally or unintentionally, and float into the sky, never to be seen again. How high can they go? The answer depends on the characteristics of the balloon material, gravity, and the Archimedes principle. Scientifically, a balloon rises until it reaches neutral buoyancy (i.e., the balloon’s average density equals that of the surrounding air and the buoyant force balances gravity).
Simple Mylar party balloons are unlikely to rise to altitudes beyond 6-9 kilometers (20,000-30,000 feet), limited by either helium leakage or material stresses. In contrast, hardier balloons made of polyethylene or latex are neutrally buoyant up to fifteen kilometers (~50,000 feet). Bear in mind that these pico-balloons are much, much smaller than weather balloons ,and are often less than one meter in diameter. As such, their payload is also quite small, only 10+ grams (0.02 pounds for those of us in non-metric countries), and they are easily affected by weather, even frost. For this reason, experienced pico-balloon aficionados prefer balloons that can rise to higher altitudes above most weather.
Under Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) 14 CFR Part 101, such small balloons can be launched by anyone, anywhere in the United States, without the need for FAA approval or reporting. The only requirements are that the balloon’s payload weighs less than six pounds, and the balloon is launched in an unrestricted area. Given the low weight of pico-balloons, the jet stream can easily carry a balloon around the world, and there are many tracked and reported cases of such circumnavigation.
Why might anyone want to do this?
The truth is that people do such things because they are possible and they are cool. After all, humans did not build the Gossamer Albatross to usher in a new era of human powered aviation. They did it because building a human powered airplane that could cross the English Channel was the union of technological prowess and human inspiration; it was the epitome of cool. (See Science: It’s About the Wide-Eyed Wonder.)
Amateur radio pico-balloon enthusiasts are no different. Yes, the technical answer is that amateur “ham” radio enthusiasts often use pico-balloons to study the atmosphere and radio propagation characteristics, but the joy is in the construction and the operation. In such cases, the payload consists of a GPS tracker for location, a WSPR or APRS radio transmitter, an inexpensive micro-controller such as an Arduino to manage the transmitter, and a few solar cells to power everything. A complete package, including the balloon, can be assembled for at most a few hundred dollars.
What’s WSPR, you say? It’s an acronym for Weak Signal Propagation Reporter (WSPR). The protocol was designed by Nobel Laureate and avid ham radio operator, Joe Taylor, and is intended to test propagation paths on the medium frequency (MF) and high frequency (HF) amateur radio bands using very low (and I do mean very low) power transmissions. A typical WSPR message contains the licensed amateur radio operator’s call sign, the Maidenhead grid locator of their rough location, and the transmitter power in dBm. The entire message fits in 50 bits. Transmitting such a 50-bit WSPR message takes 110 seconds at 1.46 baud.
Okay, let’s now reconstruct the phrase “pico-balloon carrying an extremely low power amateur ham radio transmitter.” There are several design options of varying price and sophistication, but here are the elements of a globe-circling amateur balloon, all within the expertise of amateurs and even (with supervision) high school science enthusiasts
- One small balloon (~$50 from Yokohama Balloon or ~$150 for a slightly more expensive research version from Scientific Balloons)
- Helium canister for balloon charging (~$75)
- Lightweight (~10 gram) payload, custom designed or purchased (e.g., ~$90 ZachTek WSPR controller or ~$130 QRPLabs LightAPRS-W tracker) h containing
- GPS tracker
- Microcontroller (e.g., Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller)
- WSPR and/or ARPS transmitter
- Solar cells for electrical power
- Dangling 0.005-inch wire dipole antenna of resonant length for the desired frequency (~33 feet for the 20m radio band)
- Open source software
- Microcontroller configuration (call sign, Maidenhead locator, …)
- Flight path prediction (e.g., NOAA HYSPLIT model or com)
- Pico-balloon tracking collaborations (e.g., https://amateur.sondehub.org/ or http://lu7aa.org/wsprset.asp)
I would have been thrilled beyond measure to have had the opportunity to participate in such an activity as a student. Such projects are precisely the kind of experiential science education that can excite students, filling them with the realization that science is not a desiccated recitation of facts, but rather is an endeavor filled with passion and excitement. We need many more such experiences if we are to attract the millions of additional STEM workers this country needs to remain globally competitive. (See For Science and Society, The Future Begins with Better Dreams.)
My Geek Bona Fides
During the COVID-19 pandemic, my days (and often my nights) were consumed with managing the evolving crisis and ensuring the academic enterprise of the University of Utah continued with as few disruptions as possible. Given the stress and uncertainty, I regularly counseled others to spend some time away from work doing something fulfilling and emotionally satisfying, lest they be overwhelmed by uncertain and rapidly changing events. (See The Simple Things Matter, Most of All Now.) Knowing I should heed my own advice, I sought solace and distraction in my own happy place – science and technology.
My first stop was my digital astrophotography hobby, which though always rewarding, proved uncertain, given the vagaries of Utah weather. More practically, the late nights were incompatible with my day job due to sleep deprivation. After that, I turned to writing (See My Balm in Gilead) and, finally, to my tried and true friend, computing technology.
First, I developed an end-to-end suite of software for low-power, wireless sensors, using an inexpensive ESP32 microcontroller, LoRaWAN low power wireless transceivers, environmental sensors, and open source software tools. All of this served as a citizen science complement to the larger SAGE project of which I am a part. (See Cyberinfrastructure: Lots of Room at the Edge.)
With the sensor suite complete, I studied for and passed the three FCC-mandated examinations – technician, general, and amateur extra – to become a fully licensed amateur radio operator. The study materials gave me an opportunity to refresh my memories of electricity and magnetism (E&M) from undergraduate physics and also to delve more deeply into antenna and radio transceiver design. The geek in me wished the American Radio Relay League (ARRL) examination materials had been a bit more mathematical, as many of the concepts are best understood via their roots in Maxwell’s equations.
All of which brings me back to pico-balloons and the “because we can” excitement.
First, armed with an ICOM-7300 radio and a trusty PC, I fired up WSJT-X and transmitted WSPR messages (radio callsign KK7EUJ, maidenhead grid locator DP40cp) at one milliwatt on the 20M HF band (14.0956 MHz) using my house’s gutter as an end-fed-random-wire (EFRW) antenna. Reflecting the effectiveness of WSPR encoding in a high noise, low power environment, these WSPR messages have been received by amateur stations across the entire continental United States, as shown at the right.
Second, I have written extensive code for the ESP32 and its smaller, 8 and 16 bit cousins, the ESP8266 and Arduino, the latter based on the Atmel 8-bit AVR microcontroller. Just as the proliferation of powerful, open source software has enabled construction of complex toolkits, so too have open source libraries of hardware components and powerful, open source design tools (e.g., KiCAD) facilitated design of inexpensive, custom hardware boards. As a complement to the wireless sensor library, I have also specified the design of custom printed circuit boards (PCBs), with GPS, sensors, and ESP32, which have been inexpensively fabricated in varying quantities by one of many fabrication firms.
Put another way, I realized I had followed the same path as my pico-balloon compatriots, using open source software and easily designed open source hardware to build new and interesting projects, ones that in the past would have been only within the reach of nation-states.
Coda
Sino-American relations remain deeply strained, and not just because of the surveillance balloon. The global battle for 21st century geopolitical hegemony is underway, waged via economic competition, trade sanctions, diplomacy and political rhetoric, and military posturing. There seems little doubt that we are entering a new political era, one fraught with uncertainty.
In the midst of all this, I was on Capitol Hill just days after the downing of the Chinese balloon, discussing the importance of greater U.S. research investments and developing the domestic STEM workforce. I have been working with the National Science Board (NSB) on the intersection of dual use technologies, basic scientific research, economic competitiveness, and national security. In addition to a variety of meetings on Capitol Hill, I have invited the White House National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, to join the NSB in discussions.
Meanwhile, no alien UFOs have been confirmed, unless the definition of alien includes a loose affiliation of geeks (young and old), all fascinated by the combination of electronics, software development, atmospheric sciences, mathematics and coding theory, ionospheric electromagnetic propagation, and small balloons, and all wishing to share their scientific passion with others. Could they be? They might be. The signs and omens are all there. Yes, they are. I am proud to say those are my people.
I am a geek, albeit an aging (and balding) left-handed, myopic one, some of those adjectives necessarily being implied by the geek nom de guerre. I will try not to trigger an international incident by launching any pico-balloons of my own, but I will not rest in encouraging the passion of discovery in young minds.
Nena WSPRed rightly about the Luftballons:
Man, who would have thought
That it will come to this
Because of ninety-nine balloons
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