A military surveillance blimp worth more than $1 billion crash-landed in central Pennsylvania on Wednesday just hours after it broke loose from its tether in Maryland.
The crash took out power to a nearby school.
The unmanned aircraft, one of two JLENS, or Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted Sensor Systems that have been surveying the East Coast, came detached around noon while hovering at an altitude of 16,000 feet, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Students at Columbia-Montour Area Vocational-Technical School in Bloomsburg, Pa. tweeted that they saw the blimp go down near the school.
“It knocked out the power. When we went outside it was going down on the other side of the building,” tweeted Fisher P. Creasy, a student who posted a video of the blimp around 1:30 p.m.
“Omg literally crying that a `lost’ blimp crashed into our power source and gave us a power outage,” wrote Darian Brenner.
Sam Tomassini tweeted, “I wish this blimp would have crashed tomorrow morning so my classes tomorrow would have been canceled.”
A pair of F-16 fighter jets from the New Jersey National Guard base in Atlantic City were said to be flying alongside the 243-foot-long, helium-filled blimp and were monitoring its flight path, authorities said.
The North American Aeropsace Defense Command had also been working with the Federal Aviation Administration “to ensure air traffic safety,” a spokesman said.
The blimp, which belongs to NORAD, had been moored at Maryland’s Aberdeen Proving Ground before becoming detached. It is trailing 6,700 feet of tether, officials said.
NORAD spokesman Michael Kucharek told The Baltimore Sun that the agency is working with other agencies “to address the safe recovery of the aerostat.”
Authorities also urged anyone who sees the aircraft to call polie and keep a safe distance.
The JLENS blimps have been spotted over Baltimore on a regular basis since being launched in December.
Using specialized radar, they have the ability to survey land up to 340 miles in any direction and can be used to keep tabs on both land and sea travel.
Authorities say the system is ultimately intended to seek out and stop enemy fire in the form of an incoming cruise missile or other threat.
NORAD plans on using the blimps, which cost around $1.4 billion apiece, over the course of the next three years to test their effectiveness.