SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — A large, white blimp was spotted flying over San Francisco on Tuesday morning. The blimp, which was visible across the Bay in Oakland and on the west end of Alameda, was seen flying over the city just before 10 a.m.
KRON4.com has confirmed that the blimp was Pathfinder 1, a massive helium airship built by LTA Research, an aviation startup co-founded by Google cofounder Sergey Brin. According to a post on LTA’s LinkedIn page, the company recently renewed the Airworthiness Certificate (AWC) for the blimp, allowing it to fly around a larger geographic area.
“Today’s flight took us north to San Francisco — another step in demonstrating stable, controlled operations in the San Francisco Bay Area,” the company said on LinkedIn.
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“This regulatory approval allows the team to conduct flights at greater distances while maintaining the rigorous safety protocols that define our testing program,” LTA said in a news release Tuesday.
Test flights like Tuesday’s are “designed to validate Pathfinder 1’s systems and performance under varied operational conditions,” the company said. Tuesday’s flight, which took the airship over the Golden Gate Bridge, marked “a memorable milestone and another step in our comprehensive evaluation of rigid airship technology,” the company added…