A hot air balloon tethered to Walker Beach awoke residents of Walker and Clark I at about 7am on Monday morning. Technicians from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory were videotaping the balloon, which was floating 75 feet in the air. According to Jack Jones, NASA’s Task Manager for Planetary Balloon Buoyancy Systems, the technicians on the ground "were doing a short video shoot for an upcoming NASA Press Release on the NASA Planetary Balloon Program."

The video was originally scheduled to be filmed at Cal Tech, where NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is located, but there was not enough open space on that campus to accommodate the project. Matthew Glick ‘04, the son of one of the project’s directors, contacted Associate Director of Public Affairs Mark Wood, who gave approval for the early-morning video shoot on Pomona’s campus. Glick indicated that NASA had a limited amount of time to film the video and they were running out of options. The plans for the shoot were relatively last minute, which may explain why residents were not informed.

The rainbow-colored balloon sported a Pomona College pennant and students wearing Pomona apparel appeared in the background of the video. These were some of the conditions under which NASA was allowed to film, which included a requisite mention of Pomona in the video’s narration.

The video is intended to be released to high schools and news organizations to publicize NASA’s new balloon development program. The agency plans to use modified hot air balloons to "explore all the bodies in out solar system that have atmospheres, and that includes seven planets and one moon," according to Jones. "All balloons work by containing a gas that is lighter than the surrounding gas," Jones explained as he spoke to the camera. "For this hot air balloon here at Pomona College, we are burning propane to heat the balloon air, making it lighter . . . The sun can also heat a black balloon filled with air, making it buoyant." Jones indicated that a black balloon could be used on Mars to land payloads more gently, and with less weight, than by using parachutes or retro-rockets. Some of the new balloons that NASA is testing include on-board balloon robots, called aerobots, that would automatically regulate weight and altitude.

Hot air balloons were used successfully in an international, high altitude mission on Venus in 1985. Jones predicted that the next planetary balloon missions would be on Mars and possibly Titan later this decade. The missions may involve scouting for future landing sites and searching for evidence of life.