Mystery Object From 'Space' Strikes United Airlines Flight Over Utah

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: The National Transportation Safety Board confirmed Sunday that it is investigating an airliner that was struck by an object in its windscreen, mid-flight, over Utah. "NTSB gathering radar, weather, flight recorder data," the federal agency said on the social media site X. "Windscreen being sent to NTSB laboratories for examination." The strike occurred Thursday, during a United Airlines flight from Denver to Los Angeles. Images shared on social media showed that one of the two large windows at the front of a 737 MAX aircraft was significantly cracked. Related images also reveal a pilot's arm that has been cut multiple times by what appear to be small shards of glass.

The captain of the flight reportedly described the object that hit the plane as "space debris." This has not been confirmed, however. After the impact, the aircraft safely landed at Salt Lake City International Airport after being diverted. Images of the strike showed that an object made a forceful impact near the upper-right part of the window, showing damage to the metal frame. Because aircraft windows are multiple layers thick, with laminate in between, the window pane did not shatter completely. The aircraft was flying above 30,000 feet -- likely around 36,000 feet -- and the cockpit apparently maintained its cabin pressure.

Re:throw rocks at humans

[OrangeTide]

Usually the female aliens lay eggs in you. So throwing rocks seems like a move in a positive direction.

weather balloon

[pixelpusher220]

https://fosstodon.org/@AkaSci/... [fosstodon.org]

Re: weather balloon

[mseeger]

Story is not sexy enough to be noticed :-(

Re:weather balloon

[arglebargle_xiv]

Nah, the front fell off. It was outside the environment but then it fell down into the environment and hit a 737. But it's not very typical, I'd like to make that point.

Re:weather balloon

[ukoda]

For those not from Australia and New Zealand and not familiar with the front falling off see https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[pixelpusher220]

well played, well played lol

Re:

[Chris Mattern]

Naw, it was swamp gas! Or maybe Venus...

Re:

[Sigma 7]

Since they're claiming it's a Weather Balloon, it was really hit by Swamp Gas.

Source is the UFO identification chart [reddit.com]..

nothing about from space in official reports

[caseih]

Near as I could tell the idea that this was something from space originated from a random Twitter post by someone who claimed to know someone who was on the flight (but obviously not in the cockpit). Scott Manley covered this pretty thoroughly on his space oriented YouTube channel. But the plane definitely hit something and if it had been hit in slightly a different spot it might have killed a pilot. So serious stuff.

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[backslashdot]

It was a weather balloon, pretty much confirmed.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

No, it was a garbage pod.

Collisions are serious

[buck-yar]

Whatever it was, maybe its time for specific travel lanes in the sky, for safety and security. Think of drones and ultralites as pedestrians and bicycles, much slower traffic that has a right to be there too. Maybe this object was grandma flying her bird watching drone, doesn't she have just as much of a right to the public airs as folks going on vacation? The jetliners, small planes, helicopters etc have to learn to share the sky, and maybe they should slow down and fly only in limited places as we go on i

Re:

[Alypius]

*files lawsuit, district court rules regulations are racist, issues nationwide injunction*

Re:

[blackomegax]

We already have specific travel lanes in the sky. Airlines fly them all the time.

Re:

[buck-yar]

Sounds like planes are going too fast. Maybe there should be a aviation speed limit for safety? I see planes doing wild maneuvers frequently. Maybe we need a crackdown. Fighter jets with blue lights that can pull over violators. 20mph over what ATC directs = loss of license, with escalating penalties. And we need someone not in bed with the industry, maybe we need diligent watchers like the ATF under previous administrations, where they hire attack dogs that want to end the thing they oversee.

Shut down the trash compactors on detention level

[h33t l4x0r]

Come on, Elon.

Weather Balloon

[fabiomb]

No joy for us: it was a wheather balloon https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]

It wasn't space debris

[FallOutBoyTonto]

Apparently it was a weather balloon... Source [arstechnica.com]

“The mysterious impact of a United Airlines aircraft in flight last week has sparked plenty of theories as to its cause, from space debris to high-flying birds. However the question of what happened to flight 1093, and its severely damaged front window, appears to be answered in the form of a weather balloon. “I think this was a WindBorne balloon,” Kai Marshland, co-founder of the weather prediction company WindBorne Systems, told Ars in an email on Monday evening. “We learned about UA1093 and the potential that it was related to one of our balloons at 11 pm PT on Sunday and immediately looked into it. At 6 am PT, we sent our preliminary investigation to both NTSB and FAA, and are working with both of them to investigate further.”

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

Whose song is that remembered?
At random, serpenting
Through fatty coils emerging
Some other thought is thinking

This light stands above
The houses on the ground
This illumination
Visited upon the whole land

Unmarked helicopters hovering
The Lord is coming soon
Here comes the super copter
Here comes the noise it makes
The demon was an idea
The demon is awake

Or scratch mark left across
The surface of your mind
This hour, now upon us
The hour has now arrived

Unmarked helicopters hovering
The Lord is coming soon

Unmarked helicop

Re:

[DrMrLordX]

(props to Soul Coughing)

But it's a 737 Max!

[AgateDesert]

I was fully expecting somebody to chime in and start bashing the 737 MAX because this one bashed something mid-flight. And then the anti-Boeing rants could follow up after that. I want to read more anti-Boeing rants and 737 MAX death trap posts!

Re:

[nikkipolya]

Oh! I came here for that. Let me go...

Trump govt. is obviously trying to shield Boeing here. It's no weather balloon, that's a cooked up story. Obviously, what can you expect from Boeing and that too given that it was a 737. It must be one of those Angle of Attack sensors falling apart and hitting the window. But alas, given how Trump's govt. is trying to shield Boeing, the truth might never come out.

Yet another incident shows us, don't board a Boeing.

Obviously Obvious

[RitchCraft]

I'm not saying it was aliens ... but it was aliens.

In other news...

[Bodhammer]

ICYRBRN, an airline upholstery company, reports record earnings on replacment cockpit seating covers. Film at 11!

Doubtful it could be space debris..

[Vegan Cyclist]

I'm no expert, but wouldn't something entering the atmosphere be traveling at an extremely high velocity?

If something like that hit a plane, I'd wager it'd blow a hole right through it. Not bounce off the windshield.

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[Viol8]

Interesting thought experiment there - if a piece of sheet paper was somehow deorbited at orbital velocity would it burn up in instant or would it just drift down?

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

It'd probably be shredded by the increasing atmospheric friction long before it could even burn. Just torn to pieces. If we could teleport it to within the atmosphere at orbital velocity though..... I think the same thing would probably happen.

Re:

[VaccinesCauseAdults]

If re-entering from orbital velocity (around 8 km/s) I’m guessing the piece of paper would be one of the first objects to disintegrate, given its large surface area to volume ratio, and low flashpoint temperature. However, given the literal interpretation of “fell from space” and assuming it had no horizontal velocity, perhaps it could even fall all the way to the ground (straight down), by drifting down like a leaf. It would achieve a very high true airspeed (TAS) at first, but its effect

Re:

[Calydor]

The captain is likely no expert on that matter either, but would have gone through "What the hell can we encounter at this altitude that's big enough to crack the windshield?!" and ended up with nothing coming from below, leaving only stuff coming from above.

Re: Doubtful it could be space debris..

[rygle2]

Almost definitely part of this Chinese rocket that has shed debris in Argentina and Australia in the last few days https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]

Re:

[caseih]

Nope. Almost certainly it was not.

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

It wouldn't be the first time the pilot of an airplane confused an air balloon with something from space.

Re:

[jfdavis668]

Video shows a meteor falling past a skydiver. The are fast only at very high altitude. By the time they are down to accessible altitudes, they have reached terminal velocity. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Re:

[DamnOregonian]

Not at that altitude. It'd be moving at terminal velocity- likely slower than the plane.
From the pictures, it looks like the metal frame absorbed some of the impact.

Beyond that, it appears confirmed that it was a weather balloon. A very light weather balloon, but a weather balloon nonetheless. It appears the majority of its mass is its ballast (sand). It wasn't anticipated that it'd cause as much damage as it did.

Alien Weather Balloons

[backslashdot]

Whenever thereâ(TM)s a UFO, it gets identified as a weather balloon. My question is why are the damn aliens so interested in our weather?

Re:

[EvilSS]

Whenever thereâ(TM)s a UFO, it gets identified as a weather balloon. My question is why are the damn aliens so interested in our weather?

Aliens: "Look what these earth monkeys are doing to their environment, it's hilarious!"

Back to back articles!

[Petersko]

"SpaceX Launches 10,000th Starlink Satellite"

"Mystery Object From 'Space' Strikes United Airlines Flight Over Utah"

From "Space" ?

[greytree]

With quotes around "space", is the editor here trying to doubt the existence of this alleged "space" thing ?

Or did he mean to quote it like so: "from space" ?

And it was a probably a weather balloon, so not "from space".

Well technically...

[outsider007]

All objects are "From Space".

weather balloon

[argStyopa]

Latest speculation (by the weather balloon company itself) is a Windborne weather balloon
https://arstechnica.com/space/... [arstechnica.com]

Another possibility - hail, but not how you think

[TigerPlish]

Another possibility is hail, but I'd have to look and see if any convective activity around that airplane.

Hail doesn't just fall from the bottom of the cloud. Truly vicious storms, those able to punch through the tropopause, can (and have) launched hail out of the top of the anvil, and that top of the anvil is around the tropopause itself, so at least 40,000 ft.

It is possible hail from the top fell, and got this airplane in the nose. Parent storm could've been hundreds of miles away.

That impact by the ver

Let's take a moment to appreciate the engineering

[PackMan97]

A widnborne weather balloon payload weighing less than 2.4 lbs struck an airplane cruising at 36,000 feet traveling ~500mph and the windshield not only stopped the object, it maintained cabin pressure and integrity allowing the pilots to get the plane down on the ground. This is some seriously impressive engineering.

Re:

[Quasar1999]

Indeed. Unfortunately the outer layer (glass) exploded, the middle layer (polymer) flexed so much that it shattered the inner layer (glass), and shards of it flew onto the pilot. Cutting his arm and covering the controls in sharp shards of glass. So yes it could have been way worse, but also, it shouldn't have been as bad as it ended up being. A 1 kilogram mass at cruising speed should be tolerated by the windshield without breaking the inner layer and causing injury.

Joseph Smith Returns!

[Tablizer]

Hallelujah! The magic undies work!

Interesting air law technicality

[JustNiz]

If they did in fact hit a balloon then it is the aircraft's fault as FAA air laws are that balloons have right of way over any powered aircraft.

Re:

[ChrisMaple]

The law is moot if the balloon is effectively invisible. The brief internet search I did indicated the balloon had neither a transponder nor a radar reflector, which seems irresponsible to me. There may be technical reasons that a reflector is not practical. Perhaps it would have to be too big?

Re: Interesting air law technicality

[doublee3]

Above 18000 ft, (class a airspace) air traffic controll is responsible for maintaining traffic seperation. The government needs to provide better binoculars for controllers :)

A swallow ...

[PPH]

... dropped its coconut.