According to U.S. officials, the spy balloon that was shot down earlier this month had been tracked since it took off from the south coast of China.
The balloon reportedly drifted east toward Guam and Hawaii before heading north to Alaska and eventually entering U.S. airspace on Jan. 28.
While it’s possible that weather caused the balloon to veer off course, as China has said, U.S. officials believe that once it was over the continental United States, it was being controlled by China.
The Washington Post was the first to report the tracking of the balloon.
A State Department official stated that the balloon contained equipment for intelligence surveillance, including antennas that could collect and geo-locate communications.
Pentagon officials confirmed on Feb. 2 that they had been tracking the balloon, but did not want to shoot it down due to the potential damage from debris. After the U.S. announced that it was tracking the balloon, it proceeded at high speed toward the East Coast before being shot down by a fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.
China alleged on Monday that the U.S. had flown over 10 surveillance balloons into their airspace over the past year, which the U.S. has denied.
The incident led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a planned trip to China.
Meanwhile, the White House stated on Tuesday that the other three objects shot down over the weekend in the U.S. and Canada were likely benign, but they would need to analyze the debris to be certain.
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