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China balloon: US shoots down airship over Atlantic

The US has shot down a giant Chinese balloon that it says has been spying on key military sites across America.

The Department of Defense confirmed its fighter jets brought down the balloon over US territorial waters.

Three airports were shut and airspace was closed off the coast of North and South Carolina as the military carried out the operation on Saturday.

Footage on US TV networks showed the balloon falling to the sea after a small explosion.

An F-22 jet fighter engaged the high-altitude balloon with one missile - an AIM-9X Sidewinder - and it went down about six nautical miles off the US coast at 14:39 EST (19:39 GMT), a defence official told reporters.

US President Joe Biden had been under pressure to shoot the balloon down since defence officials first announced they were tracking it on Thursday.

Second balloon spotted over Latin America:

On Friday, the Pentagon said a second Chinese spy balloon had been spotted - this time over Latin America with reported sightings over Costa Rica and Venezuela.

The launch of Artemis 1 has been successful - the next burn (trans lunar injection - TLI) is in about 20 minutes away to take Artemis on its way to the Moon.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMLD0Lp0JBg
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qhj_KAp0eYg

TLI has begun and will last about 18 minutes.

[I am having problems with video stuttering - could be my ADSL connection (fibre? Wot fibre?) or it might be the load on the streaming video itself. Reporting may be patchy. Please update in the comments if you have more current information.]

TLI has now finished and Artemis is committed to a journey to the Moon. The main propulsion unit will now be jettisoned.

Propulsion unit now jettisoned and Artemis is using the European Service Module for its journey to the Moon. There are unlikely to be any newsworthy events happening for a while now. Bon Voyage Artemis 1!