Local Date

9 September 2024

Local Time

06:40

Location

Vienna

Country or Territory

Austria

Name

Prototype Automatic Ground Station 2

Satellite

NOAA-15

Archive ID

ow604

Coordinates

48.22, 16.33

Heavy rain and cold. In the Vienna woods, mist hangs dense and low between the trees. Back in the flat, on the phone to my mum, I noticed a red balloon suspended above the rooftops. It appears to be tethered by a long string, implausibly stretching the length of the block before disappearing behind a roof. The string is long and weighs down the balloon, which despite its size must have had significant buoyancy. It looks not much larger than a child’s party balloon, but perhaps this was an illusion of perspective. I wondered if it is a weather balloon come back to Earth, however there is no visible payload. Perhaps it is a child's ambitious experiment?

decoding

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