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.”
