Why an airship was spotted hovering over this central Alberta town

If you've spotted this rare blimp over Sundry or Rocky Mountain House, don't be alarmed. It's an autonomous airship testing out a new way to collect aerial survey data, and we're taking you behind the scenes. It's essentially the same as a helium party balloon. A joint crew from a South African aerospace firm and its Canadian partner are running flight tests with this 20-meter solar-powered blimp working out of the airport near Rocky Mountain House. About the length of a school bus, The airship is piloting a trial with TC Energy to inspect their pipeline corridors in the region. Airships have been around for, I think, over 100 years now before manned aviation, but this particular technology, as far as I know, is very new, the application of combining the control systems autonomously with the airship. The flight setup starts on the tarmac. Crews fill the envelope with helium and run diagnostic checks while tethered. Once cleared, they release the airship for short calibration runs before sending it on long-distance routes. We've actually just finished flying it 100 kilometers. For things like pipeline surveying, energy companies traditionally use smaller aircrafts and increasingly battery drones. But the airship's manufacturer, Cloudline, says this blimp's 40-kilogram payload allows it to carry much heavier sensor equipment much further. Now heavier lift drones that are getting into 10, 20, even 30-kilogram payloads. But a very important distinction to make is that on those aircraft, your maximum payload is happening at your minimum range. Still, Adams says manned aircrafts could take a lot more when dealing with Canada's severe cold and high winds. Which is one of the prime use cases we're trying to develop here is to harden it so that we can use it for that. For crew member Michael Adams, it's exciting to bring a modern iteration to an aviation technology that lost momentum decades ago. following airship disasters in the 1930s like Hindenburg. It's unfortunate that 100 years ago it had so much momentum that really got dropped fast because of how technology has developed over the decades. For local residents, seeing the 60-foot blimp hovering above has turned plenty of heads. Well, we've never seen that. Actually, I've never seen that in my lifetime and I'm 65. Our communications officer said that we got more hits on Facebook for the pictures she posted of the blimp than we did about the tornado that we had in June. While the company operates airships internationally, they say such autonomous blimps still remain a rare sight in Canadian airspace. Next up for the crew is winter testing in Northern Ontario. So if you see a quiet blimp on the horizon, now you know what's up there. Nadeer Hashmi, CBC News, near Rocky Mountain House.