A pair of bizarre, white “UFOs” seen floating over Kansas City, Missouri may be a part of a secretive DARPA challenge testing the long-distance capabilities of lighter-than-air automobiles.
Skywatchers’ curiosity was piqued on Thursday when even the National Weather Service appeared stumped over the origin of the orbs, admitting in a tweet that they “truthfully don’t have any rationalization for the floating objects over Kansas City.”
While the Defense Department didn’t come proper out and admit their top-secret Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) toys had been the UFOs in query, they confirmed to Gizmodo that three Adaptable Lighter Than Air (ALTA) balloons bearing a beautiful resemblance to the thriller orbs had not too long ago been launched from Cumberland, Maryland. The company even tweeted about it.
While the true objective of the ALTA program is probably going to stay categorized, DARPA solely says it ought to “develop and show a excessive altitude lighter-than-air automobile able to wind-borne navigation over prolonged ranges.” Buffeted by wind currents and able to adjusting its altitude to take benefit of these currents, the ALTA balloons appear to have fulfilled that goal, drifting midway throughout the nation within the house of two days.
Aside from the outdated standby rationalization – “aliens” – different hypotheses explaining the white spheres included Google’s Project Loon, an ever-growing community of WiFi-equipped helium balloons designed to develop broadband entry on the bottom whereas increasing Google’s information-collection capabilities within the sky. At least one devoted Google fan appeared to show that two of the corporate’s balloons had been in the fitting place on the proper time for them to be the bizarre white orbs in query, though a Loon engineer claimed the corporate didn’t have any balloons at present working within the Kansas City space.
