Two Eagles Balloon Lands Off Mexican Coast
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Popartic/iStock/Thinkstock(BAJA, Mexico) — The pilots behind the Two Eagles Balloon flight over the Pacific Ocean landed off the Baja peninsula in Mexico a day after surpassing the distance record for gas balloons.
Recovery teams were en route to American Troy Bradley and Russian Leonid Tiukhtyaev on Saturday morning, said officials with Two Eagles Balloon. They landed about four miles off the coast.
#TwoEagles has LANDED SAFELY just off the coast of Baja Mexico. Full details being released momentarily.
— Troy Bradley (@TwoEaglesTeam) January 31, 2015
Their trip – which began in Japan – lasted 160 hours, and 37 minutes, besting the absolute world record for time aloft for gas balloons of 137 hours, 5 minutes and 50 seconds. They traveled a total of 6,646 miles, better than the previous record of 5,209 miles.
Earlier in the flight, Bradley told Mission Control he was “not nervous at all about the mission,” according to the Two Eagles Balloon team.
Although the two pilots surpassed the mark for duration of gas balloons, the record has not been officially broken. This will determined by the U.S. National Aeronautic Association and FAI after a long process of documentation and review that can take up to several weeks, or even months.
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