The lightning that lit up the skies of Kiev on Wednesday evening and triggered an anti-aircraft alert was believed to be the result of a meteorite, Ukraine’s space agency said on Thursday, and traces of a satellite crash and a weapons system had been ruled out.
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“We can’t exactly identify the thing. Our hypothesis is that it is a meteorite, but to determine its exact nature we lack data,” the deputy head of the control center of the Ukrainian space agency told AFP. Igor Kornienko.
“The observation instruments recorded a powerful explosion, we recorded it and determined where it took place,” he added.
According to him, the agency could not “assess” the size of the body that entered Earth’s atmosphere and caused the flash, but it did not hit the ground.
“According to our data, it did not arrive on Earth, there was no impact because no seismic data was recorded,” explained Mr. Kornienko.
❗️ Comment of the Kiev military administration on the outbreak: “Around 22:00 a bright glow of an airborne object was observed in the sky inside Kiev. According to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of a NASA space satellite crashing to Earth.” https://t.co/MOaolOmhUc
—Ukrainian news room (@ukrintelnews) April 19, 2023
A little earlier, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital had admitted an error when it claimed the day before that the phenomenon was caused by the crash of a NASA satellite, which the American space agency on its side had refuted.
“It’s up to the experts to find out exactly what it was,” Serguii Popko, head of the city’s military administration, told Telegram.
“The most important thing is the safety of Kiev and its residents. It was not a missile attack and our anti-aircraft defenses did not use their weapons,” he added.
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The phenomenon nevertheless led to the brief release of an air defense alarm.
Residents of Kyiv, far from panicking and accustomed to anti-aircraft alerts and Russian bombardments, rushed to social media on Wednesday night to share their images of the fireball that lit up the sky around 19:00 GMT on Wednesday night.
They also multiplied memes and humorous videos on the themes of the arrival of aliens and the war against Russia.
CCTV footage posted to social media shows a giant ball of light descending and then exploding.
I can’t take a break… The first air raid alert in Kiev in several days went off tonight. The reason? According to the authorities, debris from NASA satellites fell to earth, passed through the airspace of the Ukrainian capital around 10 p.m. and lit up the sky. pic.twitter.com/vSlmCoUY5W
— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 19, 2023
Shortly after the blitz, the military administration of Kiev had advised that it was undoubtedly due to “the crash of a NASA satellite on Earth,” as the American agency had mentioned earlier in the week that the Rhessi satellite, weighing about 300 kg would fall back into the atmosphere at an unspecified time on Wednesday.
But in a statement to AFP, NASA said that device had not entered the atmosphere when the glowing phenomenon was observed over Kiev.