The flash, which was recorded in Kyiv around 10:00 p.m. on April 19, is not related to the fall of the NASA satellite.
A representative of NASA’s communications department, Rob Margetta, said this in a BBC commentary.
According to him, their satellite was still in orbit at that time and was supposed to enter the Earth’s atmosphere only at night.
The first version of the mysterious flash in Kyiv on the evening of April 19 was the fall of the RHESSI satellite, because the US space agency announced that their 300-kilogram spacecraft would enter the atmosphere on that very day.
The RHESSI satellite was launched into low Earth orbit back in 2002.
For 16 years in a row, it was used to observe solar flares.
In 2018, RHESSI was decommissioned.
As soon as the bright glow of the aerial object was noticed in Kyiv, an air alert was immediately announced in the capital to avoid casualties due to debris falling to the ground.
Air defense forces were not working at that time.
The head of the city’s military administration, Serhii Popko, said that, according to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of a NASA space satellite falling to Earth.
Instead, the Ukrainian Air Force suggested that the explosion could have been caused by a meteorite.
While representatives of the authorities and the military established the cause of the outbreak, social networks exploded with memes about this event.
After that, the Air Force of the Armed Forces of Ukraine asked Ukrainians not to use their symbols and to stop “inappropriate jokes for hype, creating memes with flying saucers, etc.”