A two-man crew on Thursday beat the 5,209-mile record set in 1981 for gas balloons, crossing the Pacific Ocean from Japan in the process. The next day, they also passed the world record for time spent aloft.
The pilots — Troy Bradley of Albuquerque and Leonid Tiukhtyaev of Russia — traveled farther than the 5,209-mile record set by the Double Eagle V in 1981, their team announced.
To set a new record, a crew must exceed a current record by 1%, as confirmed by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, which the Two Eagles flight did by Thursday afternoon after surpassing the 5,260-mile marker.
The current record of 137 hours, 5 minutes and 50 seconds was set in 1978 during the first trans-Atlantic balloon flight.
At 7:29 a.m. MT, the Two Eagles balloon passed the record, and then beat it by at least an additional 1% at 8:51 a.m., mission control reported. The crew was still roughly 400 miles from its landing point in Baja Mexico, which they expected to reach on Saturday.
