US Navy crews have recovered a portion of the apparatus of the Chinese spy balloon from the ocean floor of the waters off South Carolina on Monday.  A senior defense official described the apparatus as “significant” in size and said that Navy crews “got the electronics they were looking for.”

The U.S. military shot down the surveillance balloon on Feb. 4, after it was spotted flying across the country for several days. The recovery effort comes as similar events occurred in Michigan, Alaska and Canada, where other unidentified objects were shot down over the weekend. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday: “They do not present a military threat to anyone on the ground  They do however present a risk to civil aviation and potentially an intelligence collection threat. And we’ll get to the bottom of it.” Austin said that recovery efforts in Alaska are more challenging since the debris landed on sea ice, after the object shot down over Alaska broke apart in midair and did not float to the ground.  Austin added that U.S. officials are also supporting Canadian recovery efforts in the Yukon Territory where another object crashed landed.

The object shot down over Lake Huron, Michigan, was down at around 20,000 feet, a senior defense official said. The objects shot down over Michigan and Canada are different from the Chinese spy balloon. however, senior U.S. official said that “we cannot rule out that these are weather balloons.” 

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