Google’s Project Loon Wi-Fi broadcasting balloons can feasibly circle the Earth in 33 days — a feat Ibis-167 recently tried to pull off. Jumping onto swift air currents and quickly changing altitudes, Ibis-167 was actually able to beat that time and circumnavigate the globe in a record 22 days. “It enjoyed a few loop-de-loops over the Pacific Ocean before heading east on the winds toward Chile and Argentina, and then made its way back around near Australia and New Zealand,” Google wrote on Project Loon’s Google+ account.
Google’s plan to deliver Internet service from balloons seems to be flying along nicely, as the company says one of its balloons just completed “a lap around the world in 22 days and has just clocked the project’s 500,000th kilometer as it begins its second lap.” Project Loon, unveiled nearly a year ago, is an attempt to use solar-powered balloons to create networks that can send wireless Internet signals to areas that would be hard to reach with wired Internet. The balloons are supposed to form a mesh network 20 kilometers above the ground, with each balloon communicating with its neighbors and ultimately to ground stations connected to Internet providers. Internet signals would be sent to antennas installed on buildings.
