The FBI will be heading north to investigate the unknown object downed Saturday over Canada.

“As Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations to help our countries learn more about the object, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said, according to a Defense Department statement.

On Saturday, an American F-22, with American and Canadian planes in the air to assist if necessary, shot down an object that had been detected over northern Alaska on Friday and then over Canada on Saturday.

The object was downed about 100 miles from the border of  Yukon and Alaska, according to Global News.

The object was the third in recent days, including a Chinese spy balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4, and another object downed off the northern coast of Alaska on Friday.

Fears were raised of a fourth object Saturday evening, when part of northern Montana’s airspace was closed to civilian traffic.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said it “detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate,” but they “did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits,” according to The Washington Post.

The initial balloon had drifted over America for several days, prompting an outcry. Ryder said Friday that the more aggressive stance toward unknown objects since then is not a response to political pressure, saying the military would “judge each of these on its merits.”

The Post quoted a U.S. official it did not name as saying that officials are now more aware of objects because the filters that decide which data from radar and other sensors will make its way to humans have been re-calibrated to document smaller objects.

The Post report said that officials use a Volkswagen Beetle to approximate the size of the objects shot down in Alaska and Canada while noting that differences remain between them.

“All of the objects are similar in certain ways and then dramatically different in certain ways. What we don’t yet understand is what sorts of technology are in there. Really capable technology can be very small and portable. So the size doesn’t tell us a whole lot,” the official said.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said Saturday it was too soon to know much about the object downed Saturday, according to Global News.

“I will not be speculating on the origins of this object this evening. It is far too early in our analysis of the debris as we are still collecting,” she said.

Anand said the object is “potentially similar to the one that was shot down to the one shot down off the coast of [South] Carolina though smaller in size and cylindrical in nature.”

🚨#BREAKING: The Canadian Defense force NORAD has determined what the object shot down over Canada was, but would not reveal the details - AP pic.twitter.com/HN2gLHRN4C

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Anand said the military action was a milestone.

“To our knowledge, this is the first instance of NORAD downing an object in Canadian airspace, and the importance of this moment should not be underestimated. We detected this object together and we defeated this together,” Anand said.

This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.