( CNN ) -- A team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology won $ 40,000 in a high-tech scavenger hunt on Saturday by discovering the location of 10 red weather balloons . The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced that the MIT team was the first group in the contest to report the latitude and longitude coordinates of all 10 balloons , which were scattered across the United States . DARPA is the U.S. military 's research arm . Saturday 's challenge is the latest in a series that the agency has hosted since 2004 . This contest was designed to test the way social networking and lesser-known Web-based techniques can help accomplish a large-scale , time-critical task . DARPA said in a written statement that the MIT team discovered the locations of the 8-foot-wide balloons less than nine hours after they launched , around 10 a.m . ET . It did not say exactly when the task was completed or how many groups had participated . Johanna Jones , a spokeswoman for DARPA , said the hunt was designed in part to give the military new ideas on ways to operate in a range of situations , from natural disasters to combat . The agency said it plans to meet with teams to discuss their approaches and strategies used to build networks , collect information , and participate in the contest . The challenge was announced on October 29 -- 40 years after the first message was sent on ARPANET , the precursor to the Internet . DARPA said it hopes the contest will lead to advances in the way the military communicates and coordinates activities among multiple geographically separated groups . On MIT 's Web site , a link was posted inviting people to sign up to help find the balloons and urging them to invite their friends . It said the MIT Red Balloon Challenge Team `` is interested in studying information flow in social networks , so if we win , we 're giving all the money away to the people who help us find the balloons ! '' It detailed a chain for giving away the money , beginning with $ 2,000 given to each person who first sent in the coordinates of each balloon . iReporter on balloon challenge . `` We 're giving $ 2,000 per balloon to the first person to send us the correct coordinates , but that 's not all -- we 're also giving $ 1,000 to the person who invited them . Then we 're giving $ 500 whoever invited the inviter , and $ 250 to whoever invited them , and so on ... '' it said . It was not immediately clear how many people participated for MIT . CNN 's Doug Gross contributed to this report .
MIT team was first to discover the locations of 10 balloons scattered across U.S . Contest tested use of Web-based techniques to achieve time-critical tasks . Challenge was announced on anniversary of first message sent on Internet 's precursor . Comment: Winning team discovered balloons ' locations less than nine hours after launch .