Project Loon Runs Into Power Lines

Remember Google’s ambitious Project Loon that intends to bring Internet connectivity to the masses, especially for folks who happen to live in rural areas? If you have answered in the affirmative, then you might be interested to hear that testing is currently being carried out, although it might have run into its fair share of snags. Project Loon’s balloons did run into some issues over Washington State recently, where the Internet search giant managed to send out a notice to the FAA, who subsequently issued an alert to steer aircraft away from the place where the balloon happened to be descending.

It was highly likely that the balloon was launched in Nevada, as that is where Google began their recent tests, and it might have been brought back down to earth via an attempt at “controlled descent.” The closer Project Loon returned to terra firma, it ran into the unexpected trouble of drifting into several power lines which were located in a rural part of south central Washington, resulting in a power cut to a tiny number of Pacific Power customers.

All Project Loon balloons do come with an emergency parachute that will help slow its fall from the skies as and when the situation arises, and Google has even formed a dedicated team to keep track of and recover balloons in the field. These activities have been specially coordinated with the FAA in order to make sure our skies remain safe and sound to everyone else.

Edwin Kee
Categories: General
Tags: Google, project loon