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
And one in particular all of a sudden seemed like it was coming fast and coming straight towards the balloon. and from there, suddenly we saw something take off from the jet. knew it was a missile. and you could see the explosion. didn t hear anything, but saw the explosion of the balloon. seemed like it started falling apart. starting to come down. and now it s just drifting out to the ocean. hard to see anymore. yeah, it s still out there, though. now the jet that reportedly took down the balloon was like the one you see there on your screen. u.s. military says it was an f-22 fighter from langley air force base in virginia and that it made the hit with an aim 9x missile. ukraine says around 500,000 people are without power following a technical failure at an electricity substation in the
reporter: the federal aviation administration has now ended its temporary flight restriction, the restricted air space that it put in place that says at the request of the department of defense, because apparently of this shoot-down of this chinese spy balloon as it wafted over the coast of the carolinas. this huge piece of restricted air space twice the size of the state of massachusetts, five times the size of the restricted air space that s been in place post-9/11 over washington, d.c. what was very telling about this when this went into place about 1:30 p.m. on the east coast on saturday was that this was up to 60,000 feet, which the pentagon says was the altitude this balloon was floating at. that s very critical, because the faa simply wanted to clear out the air space below and make it so there would not be a hazard to airliners which fly at roughly half the height of this balloon. the faa put into place a ground stop as well because of that
Pakistan from 2001 through 2008 during the height of the u.s. war on terror and the conflict in afghanistan. he was 79 years old. more now on our top story. the u.s. retrieving the remnants of that suspected chinese spy balloon after shooting it down over the atlantic ocean. witnesses captured the moment it was struck by a single missile for a fighter jet. it happened off the south carolina coast on saturday, a week after it was first detected over alaska and days after the balloon gained public attention over montana. it drifted across the country at an altitude of about 60,000 feet or 18,000 meters. that s almost twice as high as most passenger planes. but to take the balloon down, u.s. officials had to make sure that civilian air traffic stayed well away from the area. as cnn s pete muntean reports, that required taking some steps that have not been seen in a long time.
And this gives him more reinforcement in that direction. i think it further marginalizes i don t think it was a faction in either party at this point. a kind of substantial faction in either party that is looking to reverse course on china, and this is the kind of thing that will make that even reinforce that basic trajectory of our policy. yeah, great points as always. ron brownstein, always a pleasure. good to see you. thanks for having me. commercial airliners spend extra time on the ground as the u.s. military takes aim at a suspected chinese spy balloon. when we come back, what steps were taken to keep air traffic away so the military could knock that balloon out of the sky. also, the northeastern united states finally thawing out from that arctic blast that brought record-breaking low windchill temperatures. we ll have all of that and more when we come back.