Rural folk in a village of Madhya Pradesh were struck by panic and fear, as a radiosonde, an atmospheric data collection device, from Malaysia fell in an agricultural field in the Raisen district of Madhya Pradesh.
The villagers informed the police, and their team reached the spot to investigate.
The incident occurred in the village of Markhandi in the Begamganj area, about 80 km from the Raisen district headquarters, on Wednesday evening.
Begamganj Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDOP) Sonal Gupta said that upon receiving the information, a police team reached the spot, secured the area, and seized the device.
The officer said that the device clearly bears the inscription ‘Malaysia Meteorological Department’, indicating its Malaysian origin.
Police assured the villagers that there was nothing to fear about it. Nonetheless, the police also appealed to villagers not to touch any such device and to immediately report it to them.
As per information, a radiosonde is a vital instrument for atmospheric data collection. It uses hydrogen-filled balloons. It is a battery-powered telemetry instrument carried into the atmosphere usually by a weather balloon that measures various atmospheric parameters and transmits them by radio to a ground receiver.
Modern radiosondes measure or calculate altitude, pressure, temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, wind direction, and cosmic ray readings at high altitudes and geographical positions of latitude and longitude. They record the parameters from approximately 15-20 kilometres above the Earth’s surface.
Officials suspect that the device flew thousands of kilometres to India due to strong winds and the jet stream in the upper atmosphere