In an era of orbital satellites so advanced that they are able to make out objects half the size of cars from space, a spy balloon might seem like a bit of a relic.
They were a prominent tool for reconnaissance during the Cold War and were even used in a more basic form for intelligence gathering in the Napoleonic Wars more than 200 years ago.
But security experts say the balloons are just the “tip of a revolution” in the development and use of new high-altitude surveillance craft, with the UK even investing millions in a project to develop spy balloons last year.
It comes as the US military on Friday said it was tracking a suspected Chinese spy balloon, described as being the size of three buses, that has been flying over northwestern America in recent days.
A senior defence official said the US has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon and was flying over sensitive sites to collect information, while China has not immediately denied the balloon belonged to them.
Beijing admitted that the balloon had come from China, but insisted it was a “civilian airship” that had strayed into American airspace and that it was for meteorological and other scientific research.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is postponing a high-profile visit to China which had been due to begin on Sunday.
What are spy balloons?
Advertisement
The devices are lightweight balloons, filled with gas, usually helium, and attached to a piece of spying equipment such as a long-range camera.
They can be launched from the ground and are sent up into the air where they can reach heights of between 60,000ft (18,000m) and 150,000ft (45,000m), above the flight paths of commercial aircraft in an area known as “near space”.
Once in the air, they travel using a mixture of air currents and pressurised air pockets, which can act as a form of steering.
Why are they still useful in the satellite era?
According to defence and security analyst Professor Michael Clarke, the biggest advantage of spy balloons over satellites are that they can study an area over a longer period of time.
“The advantage is they can stay in one place for a long time,” he told Sky News.
“Because of the way the Earth rotates, unless a satellite is over the Equator, you need three to five satellites going all the time to track the same spot.
“These balloons are also relatively cheap, and much easier to launch than a satellite.”
Will balloons continue to be used in future for spying?
Very much so, according to Professor Clarke.
Despite the wide use of satellite technology, countries including the UK are also focusing on the development and use of spycraft to operate in the upper atmosphere.
In August, it was announced the Ministry of Defence had agreed a £100m deal with US defence company Sierra Nevada to provide high-altitude unmanned balloons to be used for surveillance and reconnaissance.
Professor Clarke said: “(These balloons) are the very tip of the revolution for passive upper atmosphere aircraft.”
He said other defence firms, such as BAE, were working on ultralight solar-powered drones which are able to operate in the upper atmosphere and stay in place for up to 20 months.
Why have China used them now?
According to Professor Clarke, the use of these balloons, if indeed they were launched by China, will likely have been a message to the US following its decision to open new military bases in the Philippines.
“I think it’s a challenge,” he said.
“They (China) are signalling that if the US is going to come closer to them then they will be more aggressive with their surveillance.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
“It is also caused a political issue in the US now, because it will be seen as a sign of weakness not to shoot it down.
“This causes some embarrassment, but the US doesn’t need to respond.”
The balloon was spotted over Billings, Montana,on Wednesday – close to one of the US’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:19
Mao Ning, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, says that those involved should be ‘cool-headed’
Military and defence leaders said they considered shooting the balloon out of the sky but decided against it due to the safety risk from falling debris.
Professor Clarke added: “I think the debris issue is a bit of an excuse. It was over one of the least densely populated areas of the US and if they needed to they could have asked everyone to stay inside.
“I don’t think they wanted to make it a bigger issue, because China are daring them to shoot it down and make it an international issue.”
More than 100 students and staff were arrested at New York University (NYU) last night as protests around the Israel-Hamas war reached a boiling point.
Recent days have seen an escalation of long-running largely pro-Palestinian protests in some of the country’s most prestigious educational establishments.
Protesters at NYU, Columbia and Yale have made various demands of their universities, including that they end their relationships with universities in Israel, take stronger action over the war and divest from military weapons manufacturers who have links to Israel.
It has led to growing tensions on campus which have become hotbeds for protest, as some Jewish students have said they have been left fearing for their safety.
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
Mass demonstrations have swept US universities since the 7 October attacks by Hamas, and Israel’s responsewhich is reported to have killed over 30,000 Palestinians in Gaza.
Protests reached boiling point on Monday night as universities took action and police were called in.
At NYU, officers moved on the crowds shortly after they set the demonstration a 4pm deadline to disperse, and claimed that protesters were joined by people “whom we believe were not affiliated with NYU”.
Several tents had been set up in the plaza where many were protesting in. A group of pro-Israel counter-protesters had also been in the plaza Monday afternoon.
On Monday evening, a line of university staff members linked arms in front of the protesters to protect them from police before they were arrested and taken away themselves.
As demonstrators tussled with officers they chanted: “We will not stop, we will not rest. Disclose. Divest.”
Police appeared to use mace on protesters, with one student saying it was used “liberally”.
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
A spokesperson for the NYPD confirmed that 120 people were taken into custody – 116 of whom were released with summonses for trespass, giving them a future date to appear before a judge or magistrate.
The remaining four were issued with desk appearance tickets for more serious offences – meaning they are required to appear at a criminal court on a future date.
NYPD deputy commissioner Kaz Daughtry said the university had requested for police to come to the campus, adding: “Our officers responded to the location without delay and dispersed the crowd – making numerous arrests, as necessary.”
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News
At Yale University in Connecticut, protests were reported to have grown to “include several hundred people – Yale undergraduates, graduate and professional students, and people with no Yale affiliation”, according to a statement from the university.
It added that the Yale Police Department issued summonses for 47 students.
Last week, more than 100 students at Columbia University in New York were arrested after the administration called to report the students as a danger to campus.
NYPD chief of patrol John Chell told the student newspaper there were no reports of violence or injuries and that the students were “peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever.”
Robert Kraft, a major donor to Columbia who is Jewish and the billionaire owner of the New England Patriots, has threatened to pull his money from the university, saying: “I am not comfortable supporting the university until corrective action is taken.”
Pro-Palestinian protests have also been set up at the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt.
The NYPD, NYU and Columbia have all been approached for comment.
In the fog of a time which feels deeply discombobulating for so many groups of people, it’s vital to see and hear what’s going on up close.
It’s a fearful time for many. Positions are entrenched, views are polarised and emotions are very high.
And in that environment, issues can be conflated, judgements can be rash and deeply complex issues can be condensed to their simplest, most digestible form.
There are a multitude of prisms through which people see things. Nuance is too often lost.
Columbia University on New York City’s upper west side is one of America’s most prestigious institutions.
It’s one of a number of Ivy League schools where protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have become a national issue confounding the police and splintering the politicians.
Those who look for nuance end up tied in knots as they seek balance.
“I condemn the antisemitic protests…” President Biden said in his latest comments on the growing movement, adding: “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians, and their, how they’re being…”
He failed to finish his sentence. There is an election coming. Being unequivocal, either way, isn’t an option.
Advertisement
From a surface level, some have concluded that all the student protesters are antisemitic terrorist sympathisers and/or all the vocal counter-protesters are genocide-condoning colonialist monsters. Of course neither is true.
What I saw from my albeit limited, allotted time on the Columbia campus was a spectrum.
Hollywood star blasts ‘lowlife scumbags’
There was the young Lebanese-American woman who wouldn’t bring herself to condemn Hamas. There was the young American man who just wanted “the genocide to end”.
There was the British professor of Middle Eastern history who sought to provide the context of a conflict stretching back so many years. And there were Jewish students whose message for Israel was “not in my name”.
The thrust of their demands was for the university to cut all links with Israel and to divest financially.
At a time when definitions are condensed, their views would, by some but not all, be interpreted as antisemitic or, in the case of the Jewish students, self-hating.
One Jewish-American politician, Bruce Blakeman, speaking on the street outside the campus, declared angrily: “They are traitors.”
Alongside him was actor and comedian Michael Rapaport who described the campus encampment protesters as: “bullies, cowards, and pathetic lowlife scumbags”.
University president warns of ‘clear and present’ danger
It is a deeply depressing statement of fact that some Jewish students and professors do not feel safe on their own campuses.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, wrote on X: “Earlier today, Columbia University refused to let me onto campus. Why? Because they cannot protect my safety as a Jewish professor. This is 1938.”
We are at another moment of febrile divisiveness and division where extremes are amplified and fear is visceral.
Slogans are interpreted as genocidal and they are compounded by the violent threats of a minority.
What was my campus takeaway, as an observer with no alliances but also no visual identifier – a kippah or a keffiyeh – to attract the potential ire of one side or the other?
Well, the prevailing vibe within my snapshot of the campus spectrum, which by definition has its extremes, was one of tolerance, with a call for an end to all killing and to occupation.
It did not chime with the way the university president had framed the situation just days ago: “A clear and present danger to the substantial functioning of the university.”
President Minouche Shafik, who is British-American-Egyptian and a member of the UK House of Lords, chose to call in the police last week to tackle the growing protest movement.
She had, the Associated Press reported, “focused her message on fighting antisemitism rather than protecting free speech”.
The thorny line between free speech and hate speech is a judgment so often left to the police.
It’s important to note that the police chief overseeing the Columbia arrests last week later said: “The students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner.”
Yet, in this febrile and condensed moment, they can be all of those things and, to the beholder, be antisemitic too.
At the heart of all this is the challenge of how to moderate the conversation; how to keep it moderate, when that now seems to be so open to interpretation.
As I write, news is emerging of more arrests, this time at another of the city’s universities, NYU. It is prompting angry reactions.
“NYU’s administration tonight joined the shameful list of US universities that called the police to arrest their own students and faculty for protesting against an ongoing genocide”, NYU professor Mohamad Bazzi posted on X.
Clara Weiss, the National Secretary of IYSSE, a student social equality movement wrote: “The Biden admin and the Democratic admin of NY and NYC have all backed a state crackdown but protests against the #Gazagenocide continue to grow and expand.”
I asked NYPD Deputy Commissioner Michael Gerber to characterise the challenge.
“It’s a great and important question,” he said.
“Determining when something goes from protected speech to unprotected speech can be very context specific; can require a lot of nuance. And you’re right, you have to make calls on a daily basis, making judgment calls. We’re doing it to the very best of our ability. [The] stakes are high, there’s no question about that.”
It is, then, a balance between respecting free speech and restricting it.
It’s about finding the right tools to allow for a sober, objective deciphering of the red line which lies between free speech and hate speech.
NASA’s longest-running spacecraft Voyager 1 is sending information back to Earth again for the first time since November.
Scientists have managed to fix a problem on the probe, which was launched 46 years ago, after five months of silence.
On 14 November last year, Voyager 1 stopped sending usable data back to Earth, even though scientists could tell it was still receiving their commands and working well otherwise.
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
It was first launched alongside its twin, Voyager 2. The pair are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space, which is the space between stars.
The Voyager probes send back never-seen-before information about our galaxy. Since they blasted off in 1977, they have revealed details in Saturn’s rings, provided the first in-depth images of the rings of Uranus and Neptune and discovered the rings of Jupiter.
Although their cameras are switched off to conserve power and memory, they are still sending back information that would be impossible to get anywhere else.
With all this data stuck onboard and the spacecraft more than 15 billion miles from Earth, NASA scientists needed to fix the problem remotely.
More on Nasa
Related Topics:
The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California confirmed in March that the issue was with one of Voyager 1’s three onboard computers. That computer, called the flight data subsystem, is responsible for packaging the data up before it is sent back to Earth.
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
Within the computer, a single chip containing some of the computer’s software code had stopped working. Without that code, the data was unusable.
Advertisement
The engineers couldn’t pop over and fix it. Instead, on 18 April, they remotely split the code across different parts of the computer.
Then they had to wait to see if their fix had worked.
It takes around 22-and-a-half hours for a radio signal to reach Voyager 1 and another 22-and-a-half hours for a response to come back.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:19
Earlier this month: Total solar eclipse moments across the US
On 20 April, the team got good news. For the first time in five months, they were in contact with Voyager 1 again and could check the health and status of the spacecraft.
Now, they’ll adjust the rest of the computer so it can begin sending back more data.
Follow Sky News on WhatsApp
Keep up with all the latest news from the UK and around the world by following Sky News