The United States has ended efforts to recover the wreckage of the downed Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
Officials said Navy, Coast Guard and FBI personnel collected all of the balloon debris from the seabed, including equipment that could reveal the information it was able to monitor and collect.
Northern Command said in a statement that recovery operations ended Thursday and the final pieces were on their way to the FBI laboratory in Virginia for analysis.
The announcement caps three weeks in which US warplanes shot down four airborne objects: the Chinese balloon on February 4 and three much smaller objects about a week later over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron.
While the military is confident that the balloon downed off South Carolina was Chinese-operated surveillance aircraft, the Biden administration conceded that the three smaller objects were likely civilian property that came under attack after defense radars from the United States were recalibrated to detect slower moving airborne objects.
Due to their small size and the remote areas where they were shot down, officials acknowledge that recovering the debris is difficult and likely unlikely. Those last two searches, however, have not been formally called off.
In the case of the Chinese balloon, the Navy was able to collect debris floating on the surface, and divers pulled the debris from the sea floor.
Meanwhile, key questions about the Chinese balloon remain unanswered, including what intelligence it was able to collect, if any, and whether it was able to transmit anything to China.
