What are High-Altitude Balloons? How can They be Used for Surveillance?

Context

Recently an unusual impasse took place between the United States and China over accusations of spying using high-altitude balloons.

Probable Question

What are high-altitude balloons? How can they be used for surveillance? (150 words, 10 marks)

About High-altitude balloons

Usage

• These balloons have been in frequent use for several decades now, though the first uses go back at least 200 years.
• They are used mainly for scientific purposes but increasingly for tourism and joy rides, surveillance, and disaster relief and rescue.

Size and capacity 

• The bigger balloons can be as large as a football stadium, go up to 40-50 km from the ground and carry a few thousand kilograms of payloads. 

Composition

• Most high-altitude balloons are built of thin sheets of polyethylene, like the common plastic bags, and are filled mostly with helium gas. 
• Those that are meant to remain in the air for a long and go higher up in the atmosphere are made of more advanced materials for increased sturdiness.
• Balloons typically have a basket attached to them, called gondolas, that carry instruments or human beings. 
• In unmanned flights, the gondolas are also attached to a parachute.

Duration of flying

• Balloons can stay in flight for anywhere between a few hours to a couple of months. 
• The flights can be ended by triggering a device in the gondola, this will snap its ties with the balloon as well as create a rupture in the fabric of the balloon. 
• The gondola then glides down to the earth, with the help of the parachute followed by the ruptured balloon. 
• The possible landing zone is calculated ahead of the flight based on weather conditions.

Usage of Balloons in Scientific Research

Significance

• Scientific Research is the most common use of balloons for which balloons are equipped with instruments that were able to perform the functions of a satellite before the space age dawned.
• Even in the times of advanced satellites, there are situations in which balloons are considered more suitable. 
• Very often, they offer better opportunities to observe specific parts of the earth and are also thousands of times cheaper than satellites. 
• As the balloons are brought down after their job is done, the instruments used are recoverable and reusable.

Popular Usage

Weather agencies routinely use balloons to make measurements of air temperature, pressure, wind speed and direction, and aerosol concentrations.

• The high altitudes that today’s giant balloons can attain, are considered useful for astrophysicists and even space agencies. 
• These are relatively clear spaces, much above the heights at which airplanes fly and far below the nearest orbits, about 200 km from earth, where satellites are placed. 
• The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has a full-fledged balloon program that does four-five launches every year. Several universities and research institutions also use balloons for research work.
• Recognition: Balloon-based experiments have resulted in at least two Nobel prizes for Physics, in 1936 and 2006.

Usage of Balloons in Surveillance

• Normally for espionage operations drones, satellites, and spy planes are used more frequently, since World War I. 
• However the usage of high-altitude balloons as tempting vehicles for spying is not known to be very common.  
• Balloons lack the sophisticated navigation systems of an aircraft, drone, or satellite, being largely at the mercy of wind speed and direction. 
• But the balloon that was downed recently seemed to have a solar panel attached to it, which has given rise to the possibility of it powering an onboard propulsion device.
• Big balloons can carry a few thousand kilograms of payload, which means they can be packed with spying instruments. They can also hover over an area for a prolonged time. 
• The biggest advantage is the greater prospect of their remaining undetected, as they are mostly flagged as birds by defense radars, due to their relatively slow movement.
• The US is now towards recalibrating its radar systems to detect slow-moving objects.

Ballooning in India

• In India, research balloons have been used for more than 70 years; Homi Bhabha launched the first one in 1948 to study cosmic rays.
• In the 1950s, the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR) began fabricating balloons, and from Mumbai and Hyderabad, multiple balloon flights were conducted.
• The TIFR established India's largest balloon plant, which is still operational today, near Hyderabad in 1969.
• TIFR has been utilized by researchers from several institutions to launch more than 500 flights thus far. It is frequently utilized by ISRO-affiliated space organizations as well as Pune's Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, which conducts weather research.
• Some private educational schools, as well as organizations like the Indian Institute of Astrophysics in Bengaluru and Osmania University in Hyderabad, also have balloon programs.

News Source: The Indian Express

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/explained-sci-tech/us-china-trade-spying-charges-why-are-balloons-usually-sent-into-air-can-they-be-used-for-surveillance-8445364/

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