WindBorne wins a hefty US Air Force contract for its balloon data

In August WindBorne became the first organization to send an unpowered flight system — one with no engine — to collect data in the eye of a typhoon. The company maneuvers its balloons by adjusting their altitude, bleeding air, or dropping sand carried as ballast, to send the vehicles into winds that take them where they need to go.

“That’s a pretty novel step, and the two ingredients for that are one, having good wind and weather models, and knowing how to navigate them; and two, having a large enough constellation that you have balloons in the right places,” Sushko said. “It’s one of the first times that a deep-learning model was used for actual operational decisions.”