(SIERRA CITY) – After much media hype and public hysteria regarding aerial surveillance, a Chinese spy balloon tracked by both public and military eyes alike has met an untimely end far different from its recent predecessor – a crash landing atop the craggy spires of the Yuba River country’s own Sierra Buttes. According to a press release from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) this past Tuesday, the balloon was launched from an airbase about 40 kilometers south of Shanghai. NORAD maintained strict surveillance on the object from the time of its launch as it crossed the Pacific, taking a flight path north over U.S. Air Force installations in the Aleutian Islands before crossing back to the south and eventually tracking over rural Northern California. It is thought that the balloon was meant to covertly image Beale Air Force Base in eastern Yuba County before proceeding over important installations in central Nevada, but a faulty seal in part of the balloon caused a helium leak, leading to the slow descent of the balloon from a planned cruising altitude of over 60,000 feet to its eventual crash-landing at the 8,591’ summit of the Sierra Buttes – over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 miles) from its launch site. Representatives of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), the Chinese military branch responsible for the balloon, could not be reached for comment, though professional Twitter troll and PRC propagandist Chen Wu took to social media to criticize the “wrong-headed geography” of Sierra County, to the great amusement of geologists everywhere and locals in Northern California. “Personally, I think this backfired on them greatly” said defense analyst Douglas Howell in an interview with national media. “They meant this as a show of strength and force, but it ended with them being embarrassed by America’s very geography.” The balloon is the same model as one shot down earlier this year near Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and consists of an instrumentation gantry around 120 feet in length kept afloat by a helium balloon over 200 feet in diameter. The aforementioned incident led to a change in NORAD radar parameters, resulting in the detection of many smaller balloons and initially leading to fears of an alien invasion in some corners of the internet before several of the offending objects were shot down and found to be hobbyist balloons launched from various sources. One of the balloons involved in the “Great Balloon Panic of 2023” may or may not have originated close to home, as the Sierra Valley Boys’ and Girls’ Self-Improvement Club recently reported that an $80 hobby balloon they launched went radio-silent over Alaska last month. As for what’s next, the U.S. Air Force is currently planning a retrieval operation involving five helicopters from Beale AFB and a number of anchors to carry the gantry back to solid ground for study – as soon as the weather clears up, that is.