Originally Published: 14 FEB 23 05:06 ET

Updated: 14 FEB 23 10:15 ET

By MJ Lee and Kevin Liptak, CNN

(CNN) -- The US and Canada may not be able to recover the debris of the three objects recently shot down by the military at President Joe Biden's direction, a senior administration official said Tuesday morning, a day after the White House tried to tamp down on burgeoning conspiracies.

"If it can't be recovered, it's going to be extremely difficult to say with great certainty what these things were," the official said Tuesday morning.

Asked what option the administration has to learn more about these objects if the debris ultimately can't be recovered, the official said that they are leaning as much as possible on the US intelligence community to assess those objects. Observations of the objects by US military pilots, as well as the objects' flight patterns before they were shot down, are all being studied, they said.

Since three objects were shot down from the sky over North America in recent days, administration officials have emphasized efforts to recover the debris and the hope that finding their remains will be able to shed important light on their nature. But all three objects were shot down over terrain that is remote and challenging to navigate, which has made the recovery efforts uniquely difficult.

One object is believed to have fallen into deep water in Lake Huron, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the search area in Yukon was a "fairly large area" in dense wilderness. Another object was shot down over frozen water in Alaska. Winter weather conditions have also not been helpful, officials have said. Even if some of the debris can be recovered, officials have also warned that the process could take significant time.

Canadian officials were candid Monday about the difficult task of recovering debris from high-altitude objects shot down over Canada and the US.

"We are working very hard to locate them, but there's no guarantee that we will. The terrain in the Yukon is rather treacherous right now so it could pose some significant challenges to us in in terms of our recovery efforts the same could be said about what's taking place in Lake Huron, the marine conditions are also not conducive at the moment," said Sean McGillis, a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Officials also disclosed that the object that was shot down over Lake Huron was first detected in Southern Alberta. Canadian officials added that out of an abundance of caution, they have deployed investigators with explosives, chemical, biological and radiological expertise.

The White House hasn't been able to say definitely whether photos of the objects were taken before they were shot down.

In a news briefing following the extraordinary three-day stretch, the White House made clear on Monday the many things it still did not know. It couldn't say for sure whether the three downed objects had surveillance capabilities. It was hard to say exactly what these objects had looked like, given how fast the fighter jets monitoring them would have been traveling. And it was still unclear where the trio of objects had originated from and to whom they belonged.

But in the briefing filled with unanswered questions, one statement from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was as definitive as anything else: The US military had not shot down any UFOs from outer space.

"There is no -- again, no indication -- of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-downs," she said. "Wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that. And it was important for us to say that from here because we've been hearing a lot about it."

While Jean-Pierre's reference to extraterrestrial activity prompted laughter from some members of the White House press corps, the White House is hardly dealing with a laughing matter. Following the unprecedented move by the president to shoot down four objects in the course of roughly a week -- starting with a Chinese spy balloon earlier this month -- White House officials have been besieged by a torrent of incoming questions about those objects and what had prompted Biden and his top military brass to take them down.

Officials have been particularly sensitive to the inherently mysterious nature of the airborne objects, and how ripe the recent series of events was for conspiracy theories.

"Everyone wants answers that no one has at the moment," one official said, conceding there was a risk with the void of information that conspiracies could sprout.

A determination was made that even in the absence of much concrete information that could be shared with the public about the three recently downed objects, it would be prudent to publicly rule out -- as quickly as possible -- the possibility of extraterrestrial activity, sources said.

There was added urgency to that consideration given that the recovery of the fallen debris -- and a comprehensive analysis of what those objects might have been -- is a process that officials acknowledge could take some time.

Administration officials continue to say their goal is to provide as much information as they can about the objects, but they have noted the circumstances are less than ideal for effective communication.

Biden himself has expressed a desire to be as transparent as possible about the devices with both Congress and the American public, according to officials, but the president has acknowledged that without a full picture of what the objects were, his ability to communicate on them is limited.

Meanwhile, the administration is hoping to correct the disparate information flow from over the weekend, electing to have National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby brief from the White House on Monday to act as a single voice on the matter after sometimes-conflicting accounts emerged from the Pentagon and members of Congress.

One lawmaker who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee had told CNN on Monday that it would be prudent for Biden to directly address the public, particularly given that the situation was ripe for conspiracy theories.

"Ambiguity is fuel for conspiracy theorists, and I hope information is shared expeditiously," the lawmaker had said.