Source: IHS Jane’s 360 – janes.com
By Yaakov Lappin
Israeli aerostat manufacturer RT LTA Systems announced on 26 July that it was launching a new family of platforms under the name ‘SkyGuard’ that are designed to carry far heavier payloads for longer periods than its existing SkyStar family.
Source: The Sun – thesun.co.uk
By James Cox and Yasmin Jeffrey
Tragedy in Lockhart as balloon’s basket catches fire and plunges into field leaving no survivors
Source: Popular Science – popsci.com
By Kelsey D. Atherton
There is too much happening at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro for any person to watch it all. Not just the sporting events, though there are over 30 events during the 16 days of the event. For the security personnel tasked with making sure athletes, attendees, and civilians are all safe during the event, that’s a sky-high task, so it helps that Brazil is going to have an all-seeing camera on a blimp record everything happening within an area of 15 square miles.
Source: Gizmodo – gizmodo.com
By Andrew Liszewski
Satellites and autonomous drones have reduced our need for cutting-edge spy planes and stealth fighters. So Lockheed’s famed Skunk Works, creators of the SR-71 Blackbird, have now built a unique robot called the Spider that can crawl over the surface of blimps to find and fix tiny pinhole leaks.
Source: Australian Broadcasting Corporation – .abc.net.au
Russian adventurer Fedor Konyukhov has broken the record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth in a hot air balloon in just over 11 days, landing safely in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt.