A weird flash lit up the sky over Kyiv. NASA denied it was a falling satellite, and experts still can't confirm what caused it.
Courtesy of @olex_scherba
- A blinding flash of light over Kyiv on Wednesday remains unexplained.
- Ukraine officials had originally blamed a satellite NASA that was falling back down to Earth.
- But US officials have denied the satellite's involvement, saying it was still in orbit at the time.
The mystery over what caused a blinding flash to light up the night sky over Kyiv on Wednesday remains unsolved after NASA denied involvement.
The flash lit up the sky minutes before the air raid alarm was triggered in the city, causing concern among residents.
Though the alarm was sounded, the air defense system was not in operation, the head of Kyiv's military administration Serhiy Popko said on Telegram, per the BBC.
—olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) April 19, 2023
Popko suggested that the flash had been caused by a satellite NASA had said was due to plummet back to Earth, per the BBC.
The Ukrainian Air Force also suggested the flash was created by a falling satellite or a meteor, according to The New York Times.
But US officials and experts have denied the satellites' implication in the Kyiv flash. The satellite was still in orbit at the time of the event, Rob Margetta from NASA's Office of Communications told the BBC.
Air Force spokesman Yuri Ihnat told Ukrainian TV that the flash was seen as far as Belarus, per the BBC.
A NASA satellite was due to fall at the same time, but not over Ukraine
NASA had previously said that its Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite, a defunct spacecraft send into orbit to analyze solar flares, was due to crash into our atmosphere within days.
Harvard astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who tracks objects falling into the atmosphere, said in a tweet Wednesday that it was impossible for the satellite to have caused the flash.
"The bright flash seen over Kyiv has NOTHING TO DO with the reentry of NASA's RHESSI satellite, whose orbit doesn't come within thousands of kilometers of Ukraine," he said.
The 660-pound satellite's reentry posed no threat to human life as it was due to burn up in the atmosphere as it crashed down to Earth.
The flash looks like a meteor, said one expert
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While experts still can't confirm its cause, there are some theories.
The flash has all the telltale signs of a meteor, Sam Rolfe, an astronomer from the University of Hertfordshire, told Insider Thursday.
"It looks pretty much a very standard fireball, a piece of space rock larger than a typical meteor or a shooting star," they said.
The size, light trail, color, and bright flash of light are all concordant with a space rock, at least the size of a football or washing machine, disintegrating as it hit the atmosphere, said Rolfe. It could also be a meteorite, an object so big that it will not completely burn up in the atmosphere, like the one that was seen above Chelyabinsk in Russia in 2013.
This may be a factor of the Earth passing through a cloud of dust which is causing the Lyrid meteor showers at the moment, though it is impossible to know for sure.
There are surveillance systems that monitor objects that could land on Earth, but these don't tend to track smaller objects. It's also possible that the rock may have been bigger, but was between the surveillance system and the sun, which makes it very difficult to spot.
Though fireballs look fairly spectacular, they aren't rare, said Rolfe.
"For persons to witness something like that is probably quite rare, but in terms of how often it happens around the globe there's probably at least one every day, if not multiple. But a lot of them will happen over the open ocean," they said.
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