hello and welcome. coming to you live from studio 4 at the cnn center in atlanta, i m michael holmes. appreciate your company. coming up on cnn newsroom i ordered the pentagon to shoot it down on wednesday as soon as possible. the u.s. has shot down a suspected chinese spy balloon after it traveled across america for days. recovery efforts now under way. china says the balloon entered u.s. air space by accident, heightening already tense relations between washington and beijing. live in hong kong with the latest from there. it s not the only one. the pentagon says a second balloon is flying over latin america. a report ahead. live from cnn center, this is cnn newsroom with michael holmes. we br to show you the dramatic moment a u.s. sidewinder missile took out the suspected chinese spy balloon that has caused so much havoc this week. the balloon was so high up, nearly 12 miles or 20 kilometers, that it took a few seconds for the shockwave to reach the grou
Heartland and causing a great deal of consternation on the ground, that suspected chinese spy balloon was shot out of the sky on saturday by a u.s. fighter jet. the balloon had finally drifted out over the atlantic when president biden s standing order to shoot it down was executed. the u.s. navy and coast guard are now actively looking to salvage the balloon and its payload from about 50 feet or 15 meters of water off the coast of south carolina. those materials will then be taken to an fbi lab for analysis. multiple people witnessed the moment the balloon was shot down near myrtle beach on saturday afternoon. here s one local resident s account. well, we came here to the parking lot then saw the balloon up ahead, up up high. and then we probably watched it, i don t know, maybe about five minutes. then started seeing some jet trails coming from the west.
All of the analysis that has gone on beforehand, they believe has no way of really measuring what they ve been able to build here. more than 725 what they describe as pop-up offices around the state to generate voter turnout and to canvas neighborhoods, block walk, and that sort of thing. it s still a question. beto o rourke mentioned this last night as he capped off his campaigning, that essentially what this election will come down to is a real test of that operation that they ve built, whether or not this has all been hype and for nothing, or whether or not the operation that they have built here is the real deal. here until the town of el paso, the election headquarter watch party will be held in the minor league baseball stadium of the el paso chihuahuas. that s the stage and sound checks you ve been hearing going on behind me. here the giddiness and excitement among democrats is really hard to overstate. here in el paso, one local resident told me there hasn t been an event like