Drone crashed into Seattle’s Space Needle on New Year’s Eve

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Video footage confirms that a drone aircraft flew directly at and crashed into the Space Needle's utmost viewing platform on New Year's Eve. The craft, which was subsequently recovered by the staff, was handed over to the Seattle Police Department on Tuesday.

Space Needle representative Dave Mandapat has provided Ars Technica video recovered from the drone, a camera-mounted DJI Inspire 1. The three-minute clip, which includes a few fade-to-black edits, shows the perspective of a craft ascending from an area east of the Seattle Center district (without identifying footage of a takeoff or origin point), then hovering above and around the Space Needle's top platform while pyrotechnic experts arranged and worked on the tower's annual New Year's fireworks show.

Roughly two minutes into the video, the drone shifts perspective to aim its camera view directly at the tower's topmost platform, at which point it apparently flies at an incredibly high speed until ramming into a spotlight. The collision took place mere feet away from both the pyrotechnic experts and their various arrays of electronics and fireworks equipment.

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