Authorities from the United States and Canada were working together Monday to recover debris from an unidentified aerial object that was shot down Sunday over Lake Huron, officials report.
U.S. authorities on Sunday, Feb. 12, decided to shoot down an unknown object that was flying at an altitude of about 20,000 feet over Lake Huron. It is one of four aerial objects that have been shot down by U.S. military this month.
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Leaders at the North American Aerospace Defense Command said the shootdowns are occurring, in part, because the organization is on “heightened alert” following a spy balloon from China that appeared in late January.
During a press conference Monday, U.S. Michigan Rep. Elissa Slotkin said the object near the state’s airspace was not believed to pose an immediate threat. Still, NORAD has the authority to shoot down an object of concern, and President Joe Biden gave the order to do so.
More: Everything we know about the unidentified object shot down over Lake Huron
It is currently unclear what the downed aerial object was. Officials described it as octagonal in shape with strings hanging off of it, though it did not appear to carry anything.
Officials initially said they aren’t ruling anything out when it comes to what exactly the downed object is. Slotkin said Monday, however, that she has no reason to believe it was a UFO.
Slotkin also said that the U.S. and Canada were working on a joint operation to recover pieces of the downed object from Lake Huron. Those pieces will be used to help determine what the object was and why it was in that area.
Choppy water was affecting retrieval efforts, Slotkin said Monday.
The exact location of where the object was shot down was not provided. Air space radar showed a U.S. coast guard plane circling over Lake Huron east of Alpena Monday morning, though it has not been confirmed to be related.
According to Slotkin, NORAD tracked the object from the Lake Michigan area to the Lake Huron area, where authorities decided to shoot it down. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer only said that the object was “near our airspace.”
Based on its flight path, officials believe it was the same object that was spotted over Montana on Saturday.
Over the last two weeks, the U.S. military has shot down at least four aerial objects, starting with a Chinese spy balloon on Feb. 4. The other three objects, including the one shot down over Lake Huron, are “not consistent” with the fleet of Chinese aerial surveillance balloons, though, according to officials.
More: US jets down 4 objects in 8 days, unprecedented in peacetime