Chinese balloon sensors recovered from ocean, says US
The US has announced that the sensors from a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down have been recovered from the Atlantic Ocean.
Search teams found “significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified”, said US Northern Command.
The FBI is examining the items. The US believes the balloon is a Chinese spy balloon, used for spying on military sites – something Beijing has denied. China says the balloon is a weather-monitoring device that had simply blown away.
Three other unidentified objects have been downed since the first one on 4 February. The three other slow-moving objects were shot out of the sky over Alaska, Canada’s Yukon territory, and Lake Huron on the US-Canada border.
“Large sections of the structure” were also recovered on Monday off the coast of South Carolina, military officials say.
About 30-40ft (9-12m) of the balloon’s antenna array are among the items found, according to CBS.
Efforts are underway to collect debris from where the other objects were downed.
