The 6-year-old Colorado boy who set a helium balloon adrift Thursday, prompting ground and air searches for him, has been found alive, authorities said.
He was found in a box in the attic at his family's Fort Collins home.
People across the world watched Thursday as the homemade helium balloon soared 7,000 feet over eastern Colorado for more than an hour and a half.
A sibling said he saw the Falcon get into the craft Thursday morning, authorities said.
But the boy was not inside the craft when it made a soft landing near Keenesburg, about 60 miles from the family home.
Authorities said when questioned the boy's two brothers who said multiple times they saw Falcon board the balloon. It is not known yet if the boy untethered the balloon and was afraid of getting into trouble or that the three brothers worked together to perpetrate a hoax.
For those interested in listening to live communications involving the search for the Colorado boy who may have fallen from experimental balloon, follow the link below.
UPDATE: Authorities are searching for a box that was attached to the bottom of an experimental aircraft that took off from a Fort Collins home, CNN affiliate KUSA reported. A Weld County sheriff's deputy says he saw an object fall off the balloon somewhere over Platteville, which is in the search area.
UPDATE: LARIMER COUNTY - Authorities are searching a specific area in Larimer County for a box that was attached to the bottom of an experimental aircraft that took off from a Fort Collins home with a 6-year-old boy inside after a sheriff's deputy thought he saw something fall in that area.
The Larimer County Sheriff's deputy thought he saw something fall in the area around County Road 41 and County Road 28.
The homemade aircraft made an apparent soft landing northeast of Denver International Airport on Thursday afternoon, but rescue crews found no sign of the boy when they reached the aircraft.
When it landed five miles east of Prospect Reservoir, 9NEWS could not see any child rescued from the basket of the balloon, but earlier Fort Collins Police had said they were certain he was still inside.
Police believe the boy, Falcon Heene, was inside the box when the aircraft lifted off around 11 a.m.
Police say there are pegs on the bottom of the aircraft that indicate that a box was attached at some point.
The experimental aircraft, which is a type of balloon filled with helium, was up for nearly three hours and appeared to start to rapidly deflate shortly after 1 p.m.
According to the Larimer County Sheriff's Department, the 6-year-old boy's parents had been building an experimental aircraft which had a large helium balloon attached to it at their home on Fossil Ridge Road in Fort Collins.
On Thursday morning, according to the family and officials, the boy got onto the aircraft and detached the rope holding it in place.
The aircraft was a dome-shaped, 20 foot, 5 foot aircraft covered with foil. As it was flying, it was going about 20-25 mph.
A spokesperson with Fort Collins Police said, "This balloon was never meant to actually carry anybody. It was just a family project they were working on. The little compartment where their son is in is very small and it's not attached very well."
UPDATE: CNN) -- A homemade balloon that was untethered Thursday by a 6-year-old boy from his parents' Colorado home was empty when it landed, authorities said.
The balloon landed south of Prospect Springs, Colorado, on Thursday afternoon.
The fate of the boy, identified as Falcon Heene, was unclear Thursday after the balloon traveled from Fort Collins to south of Prospect Springs, near Colorado Springs.
A sibling said he saw the boy get into the craft Thursday morning, raising concerns that the boy may have fallen out of it, authorities said earlier.
"At this point, we are thinking that he did not fall out of the balloon and is somewhere on the ground," Larimer County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Eloise Campanella said. "The basket itself was not breached. It does not look like he fell out of it, but again, this is all conjecture."
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- A 6-year-old boy is missing after floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt balloon and touched down about 2 hours after lifting off.
The balloon touched down about 2 miles east of Prospect Reservoir at 1:35 p.m., but the boy was not inside. That's abput 10 miles from where it lifted off.
The balloon, in the shape of a flying saucer was covered in foil and filled with helium. It has a compartment for a passenger underneath. It lifted the boy into the air near Fort Collins Thursday morning after the balloon became unhooked at the boy's home.
A sibling saw the boy get into the craft Thursday morning. Officials were concerned that the boy may have fallen out of it, an undersheriff said.
Margie Martinez of the Weld County Sheriff's Office said a sibling saw Falcon Heene climb into the basket before the balloon took off from his parents' Fort Collins, Colorado home.
Since the door on the balloon was unlocked, it's possible the boy had fallen out, Martinez said.
The balloon appeared to be a saucer-shaped, Mylar-coated helium balloon, similar to a party balloon. The craft was drifting eastward, authorities said.
Law Enforcement is searching near (and possibly in) the Prospect Reservoir area because witnesses says they saw something fall from the craft in that area.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- A 6-year-old boy is floating over northeastern Colorado in a homebuilt balloon and authorities are racing to try and rescue him.
The balloon, in the shape of a flying saucer is covered in foil and filled with helium. The craft's dimensions are 20-feet across and 5-feet high. It has a compartment for a passenger underneath. It lifted the boy into the air near Fort Collins Thursday morning after the balloon became unhooked at the boy's home. "We were sitting eating, out looking where they normally shoot off hot air balloons. My husband said he saw something. It went over our rooftop. Then we saw the big round balloonish thing, it was spinning," said neighbor Lisa Eklund.
The father and son had apparently been working on the aircraft for some time.. Airtracker 7 located the craft at 12:35 p.m. at about 8,000 feet in Weld County. It appeared to be slightly tilted. The altitude of the balloon was fluctuating between 7,500 and 10,000 feet. Skies in the area are partly cloudy and southwest wind speeds are 15 to 20 miles per hour.
Listen live to Colorado State Police tracking the balloon HERE.
"The structure at the bottom of the balloon that the boy is in is made of extremely thin plywood and won't withstand any kind of a crash at all," said Erik Nilsson, Larimer County Emergency Manager. Deputies from Larimer and Weld counties are tracking the balloon as it drifts. Experts said it could remain airborne for up to 12 hours.
FAA spokesman Mike Fergus said the agency has been notified and it was unclear whether traffic controllers had picked it up on radar.
The balloon may drift into air traffic control corridors used by Denver International Airport, based on its current location and direction. Deputies alerted DIA air traffic controllers to warn them about letting aircraft fly through the area.
UPDATE: Balloon landed in Adams county. Child was not found in balloon. Public Safety officials are searching (backtracking) along balloons flight path searching for the child.
Production of 15-ton bunker buster sped up: "WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is speeding up delivery of a colossal bomb designed to destroy hidden weapons bunkers buried underground and shielded by 10,000 pounds of reinforced concrete.Call it Plan B for dealing with Iran, which recently revealed a long-suspected nuclear site deep inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom.The 15-ton behemoth — called the ‘massive ordnance penetrator,’ or MOP — will be the largest non-nuclear bomb in the U.S. arsenal and will carry 5,300 pounds of explosives.
Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. ‘This is just a capability that we think is necessary given the world we live in.’The Obama administration has struggled to counter suspicions lingering from George W. Bush’s presidency that the United States is either planning to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities itself or would look the other way if Israel did the same.The administration has been careful not to take military action off the table even as it reaches out to Iran with historic talks this month. Tougher sanctions are the immediate backup if diplomacy fails to stop what the West fears is a drive for a nuclear weapon.Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently said a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities would probably only buy time.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen has called a strike an option he doesn’t want to use.The new U.S. bomb would be the culmination of planning begun in the Bush years. The Obama administration’s plans to bring the bomb on line more quickly indicate that the weapon is still part of the long-range backup plan.‘Without going into any intelligence, there are countries that have used technology to go further underground and to take those facilities and make them hardened,’
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. ‘This is not a new phenomenon, but it is a growing one.’After testing began in 2007, development of the bomb was slowed by about two years because of budgetary issues, Whitman said, and the administration moved last summer to return to the previous schedule.North Korea, led by Kim Jong Il, is a known nuclear weapons state and has exploded working devices underground. The United States and other countries have offered to buy out the country’s weapons program. The Obama administration is trying to lure Pyongyang back to the bargaining table after a walkout last year.Iran is a more complex case, for both diplomatic and technical reasons. Iran’s president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, claims its nuclear program is peaceful and meant only to produce energy, but the West suspects a covert bomb program that may be only a year or so away from fruition.‘I don’t really see it as a near-term indication of anything being planned. I think certainly down the road it has a certain deterrent factor,’ said Kenneth Katzman, a specialist on Iran and the Middle East at the Congressional Research Service. ‘It adds to the calculus, let’s say, of Ahmadinejad and Kim Jong Il.’Details about Iran’s once-secret program have come out slowly and often under duress, as with last month’s surprise confirmation of the hidden underground development site near Qom.
>That revelation came a month after the Pentagon had asked Congress to shift money to speed up the MOP program, although U.S. and other intelligence agencies had suspected for years that Iran was still hiding at least one nuclear development site.The MOP could, in theory, take out bunkers such as those Saddam Hussein had begun to construct for weapons programs in Iraq, or flatten the kind of cave and tunnel networks that allowed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden to escape U.S. assault in Tora Bora, Afghanistan, shortly after the U.S. invasion in 2001.The precision-guided bomb is designed to drill through earth and almost any underground encasement to reach weapons depots, labs or hideouts."
