Internet balloon falls from the sky in Meru

An internet balloon on Friday night fell from the sky and landed at Nthambiro in Igembe Central, Meru County.

The high-altitude balloon is part of Google’s Project Loon aimed at beaming high-speed internet in Marsabit, Isiolo, Mandera, Garissa and Meru counties.

Simon Wachira, a Kenya Wildlife Service controller, said they had been monitoring the balloon for six months.

“The balloon has a self shelf life and its controlled to descend in a safe place where there is no settlement or human interference but sometimes because of the wind its pushed away from the intended area like in this case,” said Wachira

“The balloon is supposed to be recovered so that all the information collected by the balloon is recovered by our experts.”

It is part of Project Loon, a network of balloons traveling on the edge of space that are designed to extend Internet connectivity to people in rural and remote areas worldwide.

“High speed internet is transmitted up to the nearest balloon from our telecommunications partner on the ground, relayed across the balloon network, and then back down to users on the ground. We have demonstrated data transmission between balloons over 100 km apart in the stratosphere and back down to people on the ground with connection speeds of up to 10 Mbps, directly to their LTE phones,” read a description on X company’s website.

“It does not have any radioactive material and it is not harmful” said Wachira

The X Company is behind the idea to increase internet access to rural and remote populations worldwide.