looks like on the day of the launch there was cloud cover. and if i were going to launch a balloon, i would've chosen a cloudy day to do that in order to minimise the chance of detection. china claimed the balloon was a civilian airship used for scientific research such as meteorology. the balloon that we saw was not a weather balloon. it's far larger with a lot more complexity. in terms of the payload package, it's very large. you know, it's been compared to multiple school buses. the balloon is suspected to have been gathering what's known as signals intelligence. if you're trying to pick up cellphone transmissions or understand communication patterns, then i could theoretically see where the balloon could be a useful platform for that. the balloon appeared to be equipped to do just that. according to the us