MIAMI VALLEY — People in the Miami Valley want to know what those big balloon-like objects are that have been spotted across the Miami Valley.
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The Thunderhead super-pressure balloons belong to Aerostar, a South Dakota-based company.
The company launched two balloons on June 14 and June 15 from Dangle Airport, S.D.
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The company conducts a diverse range of missions for its clients.
Russ VanDerWerff, Vice President of Stratospheric Systems at Aerostar, elaborated on some of these activities.
“We’ve done some environmental and weather missions, we’ve done methane leak detection and tracking with ExxonMobil, we’ve gone wildfire tracking with U.S. Forest Service, so there’s a lot of cool stuff, we done collections for customers including government and defense,” VanDerWerff said.
The specific customer for the balloons launched on June 14 and June 15 remains confidential, according to VanDerWerff.
VanDerWerff also assured that there are no concerns for people on the ground as the balloons continue their missions for customers.
