Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — Something strange appeared over the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys Tuesday evening.
KSL.com's iWitness app suddenly flooded with photos and tales of a seemingly shiny object hovering above the Oquirrh Mountains starting around 8 p.m. Matt Lazanich also captured a better look of the exclamation point-looking object with a telescope from the Tooele area.
Those submitting photos or emailing KSL about it wanted to know what it was, especially after the National Weather Service said it wasn't any weather balloon they were aware of.
Saw a weird, glowing object above Grantsville tonight, so I pulled out the telescope. Is this a weather balloon, @NWSSaltLakeCity@WasatchSnow? Pretty cool!
— Matt (@mattlazanich) August 3, 2022
(Ignore the goat/horse noises). @KatieMcKellar1pic.twitter.com/treckjouIZ
A possible UFO, perhaps?
Nope, this wasn't a close encounter of the third kind — at least not this time.
It was a stratospheric balloon launched by the company World View, which touts itself as a stratospheric exploration and space tourism company. Reports of this balloon have popped up all over the U.S. in recent days, resulting in similar questions from people below, at least according to news coverage elsewhere in the country.
A spokesman for a public relations firm that represents the company confirmed to KSL that it was indeed their balloon over the Salt Lake area Tuesday evening. The balloon was being used to gather data "on various system performances," he said.
"Our remote-sensing division does various missions in several parts of the U.S., and the wind conditions in the stratosphere right now over Salt Lake City are ideal to test out our systems," the statement read.
Thus putting an end to Tuesday evening's mystery.
Editor's note: This article previously stated the balloon was spotted over Utah on Monday. It was spotted over Utah on Tuesday.
