The mysterious radiance that lit up his sky yesterday, Wednesday, evening Kyiv and triggered a brief anti-aircraft alert, likely due to a meteorite, the Ukrainian Space Agency told AFP today.

“We cannot identify him for sure. Our hypothesis is that it was a meteorite, but we do not have data confirming its exact nature,” said Igor Kornienko, deputy head of the control center of the Ukrainian Space Agency.

“Surveillance devices recorded a powerful explosion, we fixed it and determined where it happened” in the sky, he added.

I can’t tear myself away… Tonight, the first air raid alarm in several days was sounded in Kyiv. Cause? According to the authorities, debris from a NASA satellite fell to the ground, flying over the airspace of the Ukrainian capital around 22:00 and illuminating the sky. pic.twitter.com/vSlmCoUY5W

— Christopher Miller (@ChristopherJM) April 19, 2023

The agency was unable to “calculate the size” of the body that entered Earth’s atmosphere to cause the flare, he said, but instead determined that the body in question did not hit the ground.

“According to our data, it did not reach the Earth, there was no impact, since no seismic data was recorded,” Kornienko explained.

NASA satellite crash estimate wrong

A little earlier, the military administration of the Ukrainian capital admitted that yesterday they made a mistake when they said that the phenomenon was caused by the fall of a NASA satellite, which the US space agency denied.

“Exactly what it was is for the experts to find out,” said Sergei Popko, head of the city’s military administration.

“The most important thing is the security of Kyiv and its residents. It was not a missile strike, and our air defense systems did not use their weapons,” he added.

However, this phenomenon caused a brief anti-aircraft alert.

Residents of Kyiv, accustomed to anti-aircraft alerts and Russian shelling, posted images on social media yesterday of a fireball that lit up the sky around 22:00 GMT.

They also posted humorous videos with scenarios about the arrival of aliens and the war against Russia.

^{Source: APE-MEB, AFP.}