Related Aircraft Damage
Sprites have erroneously been held responsible for otherwise unexplained accidents involving high altitude vehicular operations above thunderstorms. One example of this is the malfunction of a NASA stratospheric balloon launched on June 6, 1989 from Palestine, Texas. The balloon suffered an uncommanded payload release while flying at 120,000 feet (37,000 m) over a thunderstorm near Graham, Texas. Months after the accident, a post-flight investigation concluded that a "bolt of lightning" traveling upward from the clouds provoked the incident. The attribution of the accident to a sprite was evidently made retroactively by several years, since this term was not coined until late 1993. Because of the comparatively low altitude of the balloon, whatever thunderstorm-related discharge may have been a causative factor in the accident, it was more likely to have been one of several other types of stratospheric discharges known to occur, such as blue jets, rather than the higher altitude sprites.
Read more about this topic: Sprite (lightning)
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