Alphabet's Loon balloons developed clever strategies to pass 1M hours flying in Earth's stratosphere

Alphabet's Loon subsidiary, which aims to blanket the Earth in high-speed broadband internet connectivity, has passed the 1 million-hour mark in terms of total time spent in Earth's stratosphere across all its flights. The balloons occupy the upper-edge of Earth's atmosphere, in an altitude band between 50,000 and 70,000 feet, riding wind currents and using automated navigation systems to intelligently fly in specific areas defined by Loon's engineers. Loon's balloons have accumulated almost 40 million km (nearly 25 million miles), or enough to make the trip to the Moon and back more than 50 times.