“Natural body collides with Earth’s atmosphere, not related to human activity: Astronomer explains flash over Kyiv”

According to Spurný, it is also evident from random videos that it was a car.

“But since we have a bolide camera of the European bolide network, e.g. in the very east of Slovakia in Kolonice, we also have a short photographic, video and radiometric record of this extremely bright bolide far to the east,” the astronomer, who is also the head of the mentioned European bolide network, told Novinka .

“I want to set the record straight. It was the collision of a large meteoroid that flew into the atmosphere at 20:57:20 CEST and went out after less than five seconds,” stated Spurný.

According to him, the vast majority of the body burned up in the atmosphere. It is not yet possible to determine from the available records whether and possibly where some of its remains (meteorites) could have landed on the earth’s surface.

“However, we can clearly rule out the fall of any satellite from what we have from our own records. In any case, it was a natural body and it has nothing to do with human activity,” he summarized.

However, he responded to Novinek’s request for the records by apologizing and explaining that at the moment he would not like to publish the records because, according to him, they primarily have a scientific value and it is necessary to further analyze them and “extract” data from them before everything is provided even to “scientific competition “.

“Besides, it’s nothing so bombastic for the ignorant consumer of information that he’s used to,” he noted.

“By having it from at least two places (yet from another station in Slovakia in Stará Lesná in the Tatras – editor’s note) and more devices, so we will try to at least basically describe where it flew, where it came from, and whether and possibly where something could have fallen from it. It just takes time, we’re working on it, but it’s not something that can be done in an hour. We know it was a natural body, but that’s about it for now. We will know more later,” he concluded.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) itself, according to the news station BBC denied that it was his RHESSI (Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) satellite, as originally speculated. RHESSI monitored solar flares and ceased service in 2018.

NASA representatives told AFP that the satellite was “still in orbit”. They added that no other NASA satellites returned to the atmosphere on Wednesday.

Serhij Popko, the administrator of the Kyiv region, informed about the bright flash on Wednesday. An air traffic alert was issued because of this. However, as Popko added, it was not a raid. “Air defenses did not interfere,” he said.

The Ukrainian Air Force mentioned shortly afterwards that the flash “was associated with the fall of a satellite or meteorite”.

The flash came at a time when the city is experiencing regular airstrikes by Russian forces.