Not NASA space junk — Ukraine’s State Space Agency explains mysterious flash as ‘high-energy acoustic event’
In the evening of April 19, a bright flash was noticed over Kyiv and the Oblast (Photo:Скриншот відео/Соцмережі)
A high-energy acoustic event was registered over the territory of Ukraine late on April 19, infrasound devices from Ukraine’s State Space Agency, which monitors seismic and geophysical phenomena, reported on April 20.
A mysterious flash lit up the skies over the Ukrainian capital Kyiv late on April 19.
Initial speculation that the explosion was the result of an old NASA satellite has been replaced with a growing belief that the object was a meteor.
“The event is probably related to the entry of a space body into the dense layers of the atmosphere. Information is being clarified,” State Space Agency scientists said.
Kyiv City Military Administration chief, Serhiy Popko, said that the flash was not the city’s air defenses knocking out enemy missiles, but rather “the result of a NASA satellite crash landing on earth.”
NASA spokesperson Rob Margetta said the RHESSI satellite, which was expected to re-enter Earth atmosphere that day, was “still in orbit” when the phenomenon was visible over Kyiv, he told the BBC.
NASA and the U.S. defense department continued to track RHESSI, he added.
The Alpha Centauri, a popular science channel, reported that the NASA satellite’s orbit did not pass over Ukraine on the evening of April 19 and speculated that the object in the sky was a bolide — a type of meteor.
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