That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.

And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.

> That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.

Not true: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...

Thank you. I missed this somehow.

Not that it's necessarily indictatory, but this balloon had a payload the size of a small jet. By my understanding (I could be wrong) that's very uncommon for a weather balloon.

Maybe in the near future you won't be able to attach a full tube of toothpaste to a weather balloon and send it high up into the air, just a 3 oz size.

Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).

Wrong.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html...

I assume this would be slightly more clear as "aren't tracked by radar anymore [by their controllers]" -- who does what tracking and how, of course, wildly varies. (Not trying to be overly pedantic, just saying out loud my internal thought reply.)