Chinese spy balloons and UFOs: What are the objects being shot down from American skies?

The US military is trying to solve the mystery around three flying objects that have been shot down from the skies above America in the past few days.

Not only are officials unsure what they actually are, they are also unsure how they're able to fly at all.

There have now been four objects shot down from US skies this month - the first one was thought to be a surveillance balloon sent by China, although the Chinese government have denied this.

And while the most recent three have been balloon-like in structure, and filled with gas, US Northern Command Commander General Glen VanHerck has said he wants to call them objects "for a reason".

The objects have been referred to as UFOs (unidentified flying objects), and Commander VanHerck has said he's ruling no explanations out - including aliens.

While there are lots of questions about what they are and where they've come from, the US military has said there's no indication any of them posed any threat.

On 4 February, American government officials decided to shoot down a balloon that had been flying over US skies.

It had been hovering for a few days, and they were concerned that it was being used to spy on them, and that it had been made and launched by the Chinese government.

China strongly denied this and said it was a weather monitoring device that had blown astray. The two countries argued over the incident.

Then on 10 February, the US brought down another flying object near Alaska. Officials said they couldn't see any mechanisms within it that would make it fly.

The next day, on 11 February, another UFO was shot out of the sky about 100 miles from the US border, above the Yukon Provence in Canada.

Finally, on 12 February, President Joe Biden ordered a fourth flying object be brought down "out of an abundance of caution".

That's exactly what the American government is trying to figure out.

One senior official told ABC News that the three most recent objects to be shot down were likely weather devices.

However, one US politician, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, disagreed. He had told the broadcaster that intelligence officials believed the objects were in fact surveillance balloons.

And Commander Gen VanHerck said "I will let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out," when asked if it was possible the objects are aliens.

He continued: "I haven't ruled out anything at this point."

The US is still working to recover the remnants of the latest objects shot down, with a White House National Security spokesperson saying: "These objects did not closely resemble, and were much smaller than, the [4 February] balloon and we will not definitively characterise them until we can recover the debris."

UFO stands for Unidentified Flying Object.

It basically means anything that's flying in the sky that can't be explained by whoever's spotted it.

Some people believe UFOs could be some kind of alien spacecraft, but that's never been proven.

It's thought that lots of 'sightings' are actually just tricks of the light, or some other kind of optical illusion.

While lots of people still call them UFOs, many experts now use UAPs: Unexplained Aerial Phenomena or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon.

The search for the debris continues so that the US can identify the objects.

Meanwhile, China's foreign ministry said today that the US had flown balloons into its airspace more than 10 times in the past year.

"It's not uncommon as well for the US to illegally enter the airspace of other countries," said foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin at a press briefing.

Other countries are watching the response in the US closely, in case an object is discovered in their airspace.

In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said his government would do "whatever it takes" to keep the country safe.

"We have something called the quick reaction alert force which involves Typhoon planes, which are kept on 24/7 readiness to police our airspace, which is incredibly important," he added.