Nasa says mysterious flash over Ukraine was not caused by its satellite

Nasa says flash seen when its satellite was still in orbit

Nasa has said the strange flash of light seen over Kyiv was not caused by one of the space agency’s satellites scheduled to crash on Earth, as has been claimed by Ukraine’s military administration.

Kyiv’s city military administration head Serhii Popko said citing “preliminary data” that a mysterious bright flash of light spotted in the sky over the city at about 10pm local time on 19 April was from falling Nasa satellite debris.

The city then turned on its air raid alert to prevent casualties from any of the suspected falling debris, but “air defence was not in operation,” Mr Popko noted.

“According to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of a Nasa space satellite falling to Earth,” he said in a post on Telegram.

Nasa had said earlier in the week that its retired 300kg (660 pound) RHESSI satellite used to observe solar flares would re-enter the atmosphere on Wednesday.

The US space agency predicted the spacecraft to re-enter the atmosphere at about 8.50pm EDT on Wednesday.

It said it expected most of the spacecraft to burn up as it traveled through the atmosphere, with some components to survive re-entry.

“The risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth is low – approximately 1 in 2,467,” Nasa said in a blog post.

Nasa’s Office of Communications, however, told the BBC that the satellite was still in orbit at the time the flash was reported from Ukraine, adding that the US defence department and the American space agency continued to track RHESSI.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell also tweeted on Thursday that the bright flash seen over Kyiv had “NOTHING TO DO with the reentry of Nasa’s RHESSI satellite”.

He said the satellite’s orbit does not come within even “thousands of kilometres of Ukraine”, adding that the odds of it entering Kyiv were “zero”.

“RHESSI orbit did not pass over Ukraine at all,” he tweeted.

The astronomer, known for tracking orbit trajectories, said the Nasa satellites re-entry track to Earth included South America, northern Africa, central Asia, and China.

He said the satellite was only re-entering Earth 9.55 pm EDT on Tuesday.

“Re-entry window for RHESSI has now opened. It will reenter in the next 2 hours. However we may not know when and where it reentered for seveal hours after that, unless someone sees the reentry breakup fireball,” Mr McDowell tweeted few hours earlier.