Commercial fishermen off the coast of Alaska found what the U.S. Department of Defense is calling a “large balloon with payload” and delivered it to the U.S. Coast Guard in Dutch Harbor.
Officials haven’t confirmed when the balloon was found but reporters with KUCB saw a bundle of parachute-like material being loaded onto a Coast Guard C-130 airplane on Saturday. The balloon was sent to Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage for further investigation.
In a statement, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski referred to the balloon as an “item of national interest.”
The incident comes about a year after a large balloon, which U.S. officials said was launched from China for intelligence-gathering purposes, passed over Alaska and Montana before being shot down by an Air Force fighter jet off South Carolina. That discovery prompted heightened concerns about air-defense tracking of unidentified balloons and several shootdowns of similar objects.
According to the Department of Defense, the latest balloon was caught in the nets of an unnamed American fishing vessel. The Coast Guard asked the fishermen to store the materiel on board until docking in Dutch Harbor.
Multiple agencies will analyze the object to learn more about its origin and purpose.
“We do not know why the balloon was in the waters off the coast of Alaska nor are we going to characterize it at this time,” wrote Department of Defense spokesperson Sue Gough in an email.
The FBI and Alaska National Guard were also involved in the recovery.