Reminds me of the incident when the Government/US Military issued photos of a deflated weather balloon in place of what eye witnesses says was a crashed UFO in Roswell NM on July 7, 1947. Trust this government?? No F in way!
If I were flying a research weather balloon, I would need some solar cells to power a transmitter, probably for data up to the satellite network. It would need a barometer, a digital thermometer and the a receiver for the Chinese BeiDou system (their fully operational GPS equivalent).
This way you could map temperatures and baro pressures to BeiDou location, and multiple measures of location get you windspeed.
You also need a deflate mechanism and a reciever to get the venting command for when the mission is done. It is, of course, that which failed. Only that. It’s why the weather minister was fired. That device’s failure caused all this upheaval.
And a power supply to charge batteries from the solar panels.
Now all they have to do is find some guys to lie about what is in the sensor package they eventually find, or create.
Here is a documentary of what really happened at Area 51 in 1947.
The military released this to use as plausible deniability in the future.
Star Trek DS9 : Little Green Men II
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0HeOJeX-wM