‘UFO’ Was Balloon Hoisting a Telescope

The unidentified flying object that drifted over the Rio Grande Valley on Thursday afternoon was a massive scientific balloon, flying higher than you might have realized.

Launched at 9 a.m. Thursday morning from the National Scientific Balloon Launch facility at Fort Sumner, the balloon carried a telescope to the edge of the atmosphere, said Bill Stepp, operations manager at the launch site.

The balloon program’s Fort Sumner site is one of several around the world used by NASA to launch balloons carrying scientific payloads to the edge of space. As it passed over the Rio Grande Valley, the balloon was more than 24 miles up, according to Stepp.

The telescope was carried aloft for Jack Tueller, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Facility in Maryland. Tueller studies objects that emit X-rays and gamma rays, which cannot penetrate Earth’s atmosphere. The balloons carry his telescope so that interference by the air is not a problem.

The balloon that flew Thursday was more 518 feet wide and 482 feet high, according to Stepp.