SHANGHAI. — The US shooting down of what Washington says was a Chinese spy balloon and Beijing says was a civilian scientific vessel accidentally blown off course has fueled widespread questions, including about the balloon itself.
More is likely to be learned about the balloon after the US military recovers its remnants from the ocean off the coast of South Carolina.
Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about the balloon that has triggered a dramatic diplomatic dispute between the two powers:
How big is it?
The head of North American Aerospace Defense Command, General Glen VanHerck, described the balloon as being 200 feet (61 meters) high, with a surveillance payload the size of a regional passenger jet that likely weighed in excess of a couple thousand pounds.
Civilians viewing the balloon from the ground described it as a giant white orb as it floated about 60,000 feet (18,300 meters) above the central United States, an altitude roughly twice that of civilian air traffic.
US officials said they had been tracking the high-altitude for some time and that it drifted over the United States for at least seven days.
What has China said?
China’s foreign ministry said the balloon was mainly used for meteorological purposes and had limited self-steering ability. It said it was affected by the weather and unexpectedly drifted into US airspace.
The ministry has also said it has no information to share about what company or entity owns the balloon.
Was it a weather balloon?
Kaymont, a US firm that makes and distributes weather balloons globally, said the size, payload and flight time exceeded the capabilities of typical weather balloons that are made of latex.
“A typical weather forecasting balloon will have a lightweight radiosonde payload that is about 200 grams in weight. The balloon at release will be about 1.4 meters and will burst around 6 meters in diameter, and the flight time will be between 90-120 minutes,” Jesse Geffen, a Kaymont account manager, told Reuters.
“Photographic payloads (high altitude photography and videography) may be carried by larger balloons, but wouldn’t even be a third of the size of the balloon that flew over the country.”
In China, the manufacture of weather balloons is dominated by a subsidiary of state chemical giant ChemChina, Zhuzhou R&D Institute for Rubber & Plastics (Zhuzhou Rubber), which makes 75% of high-altitude balloons used by the China Meteorological Administration, the country’s regulator of state-owned firms said in a statement last year.
Smaller players include Guangzhou Double-One Weather Equipment Company, whose company’s chairman Lin Xiuping told Reuters that her firm and Zhuzhou Rubber were capable of making balloons that could fly at the height the Chinese balloon was flying at over the United States.
She said, however, that Guangzhou Double-One was not the manufacturer of that balloon.
An employee that answered the phone at Zhuzhou Rubber’s headquarters said the US balloon had nothing to do with the company and declined to accept further questions. — Reuters
