A flash in the sky over the Ukrainian capital prompted confusion and alarm as city authorities said it was caused by a Nasa satellite reentering the atmosphere, while the US space agency denied involvement.
A “bright glow” was observed over Kyiv around 10pm local time, the head of Kyiv’s military administration Sergiy Popko wrote on Telegram.
An air raid alert was activated, Popko said, but “air defence was not in operation”.
Shortly after, the Ukrainian air force said the flash was “related to the fall of a satellite/meteorite”.
But a Nasa spokesperson denied this assessment, telling the AFP news agency that the satellite in question was “still in orbit”.
The US space agency had announced earlier this week that a retired 300kg satellite would reenter the atmosphere some time on Wednesday.
“However, that reentry has not yet occurred … No other Nasa satellite reentered the atmosphere earlier today,” a Nasa spokesperson told AFP.
The Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) spacecraft, used to observe solar flares, was launched into low Earth orbit in 2002 and decommissioned in 2018, Nasa said.
Speculation and memes abounded on Ukrainian social media after several channels posted videos showing the powerful flash lighting up the sky over Kyiv.
“While social media is amused by flying saucer memes … please do not use the official symbol of the air force to create memes!” an air force tweet said.
In a statement on Monday, Nasa had said it expected most of the RHESSI spacecraft to burn up as it reentered the atmosphere.
“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.