'Bright Glow' Over Kyiv Sky Assumed To Be Meteorite, Officials Deny Russian Missile Attack Rumours

<p>A flash of light in the sky over Ukrainian capital of Kyiv on Wednesday causing worry was assumed to be a meteorite, said Ukraine's space agency Thursday, after officials denied it was a satellite or a Russian missile attack. Initially the head of city's military administration said the flash to be caused by a NASA satellite returning to Earth but the same was denied by the US space organisation saying the satellite in question was "still in orbit". &nbsp;</p> <p>The US space agency had announced earlier this week that a retired 660-pound (300-kilogram) satellite would reenter the atmosphere some time on Wednesday.</p> <p>"We cannot identify what it was exactly, but our assumption is that it was a meteorite," Igor Korniyenko, the deputy head of a control centre at Ukraine's national space agency said Thursday, adding there was not sufficient data to determine "the exact nature" of what might have caused the flash, reported AFP.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">Something happened in Kyiv sky tonight. The whole city is at a loss, what it was. UFO? <a href="https://t.co/DAic7QHae2">pic.twitter.com/DAic7QHae2</a></p> &mdash; olexander scherba🇺🇦 (@olex_scherba) <a href="https://twitter.com/olex_scherba/status/1648780853386924033?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 19, 2023</a></blockquote> <p> <script src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" async="" charset="utf-8"></script> </p> <p>As per the report the head of Kyiv's military administration Sergiy Popko ruled out the possibility of the bright light to be a Russian missile saying "only experts can find out, what exactly it was."&nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;</p> <p>Used to observe solar flares, The RHESSI spacecraft, was launched into low Earth orbit in 2002 and decommissioned in 2018, NASA said, stated the report.&nbsp;</p> <p>A "bright light" was observed in the sky over Kyiv around 10:00 pm, said the report quoting Popko as saying.&nbsp;</p> <p>An air raid alert was activated, Popko said, but "air defence was not in operation."</p> <p>Shortly after, the Ukrainian Air Force also said the flash was "related to the fall of a satellite/meteorite," the report added.</p> <p><strong>ALSO READ: <a title="First Solar Eclipse Of 2023 On April 20, Will Be 'Hybrid'. All About The One-In-10-Years Eclipse" href="https://ift.tt/XdhbzwP" target="_blank" rel="noopener">First Solar Eclipse Of 2023 On April 20, Will Be 'Hybrid'. All About The One-In-10-Years Eclipse</a></strong>&nbsp;</p> <p>After the video of the bright light was posted by several channel, showing a powerful flash lighting up the sky over Kyiv, Ukrainian social media was abounded with speculations and memes.&nbsp;</p> <p>"While social media is amused by flying saucer memes... please do not use the official symbol of the Air Force to create memes!" the Air Force said.</p> <p>NASA, in a statement on Monday, said it was expecting most of the Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager spacecraft to burn up as it enters the atmosphere.</p> <p>"But some components are expected to survive reentry," NASA said, adding that the risk of harm to anyone on Earth was low -- approximately one in 2,467.</p>