A secretive Chinese balloon has been found - thanks to AI.
Satellite company BlackSky Technology have released images of what appears to be a large blimp-like aircraft near a huge hanger.
Appearing as an elongated, white object on a long runway, the Virginia-based firm say these are the first and only known public satellite images, according to a third-party intelligence analyst, of an alleged aerostat at the Korla East Test Site, China.
The rare pictures were captured on two days in November 2022 at around 9am local time, and are the only ones, from among more than a thousand images collected over the duration of one year, that show a likely airship on the ground.
They were taken less than three months before a Chinese-operated high-altitude balloon was spotted in North American airspace.
On February 4, the U.S. Air Force shot down the balloon over U.S. territorial waters off the coast of South Carolina, on the order of U.S. President Joe Biden.
Debris from the wreckage was recovered and sent to the FBI Laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis.
American and Canadian militaries announced that the balloon was for surveillance, while the Chinese government maintained it was a civilian, mainly meteorological, airship that had been blown off course.
BlackSky say they design, own and operate one of the industry's leading low earth orbit small satellite constellations, optimised to capture imagery cost-efficiently where and when customers need it.
They explain their "Spectra AI software platform processes data from BlackSky's constellation and from other third-party sensors to develop the critical insights and analytics that our customers require.
"BlackSky is relied upon by U.S. and international government agencies, commercial businesses, and organisations around the world," they add.
Brian E. O'Toole, BlackSky CEO, explains: "BlackSky has permanently changed how humanity will use space to deliver actionable intelligence.
"Capturing this early morning image was only made possible after building the world's first commercial high-frequency monitoring satellite constellation and AI-driven tasking and analytics platform.
"BlackSky say their first-of-a-kind commercial constellation provides reliable and dynamic hourly monitoring, up to fifteen times a day from dawn until dusk.
"Continuous, around-the-clock monitoring gives our most demanding customers the unique ability to see anomalies, capture rare events and stay informed about critical areas of interest in real time," O'Toole says.
The company say they deliver thousands of images and analytics every month to government organisations worldwide, "delivering transparency and insights into border crossings, nuclear and port facilities, and other strategic and economically critical infrastructure at scale".
