Kiev authorities said the outbreak over the city, for which an air raid alert was announced, was caused by the downing of a US satellite. This was announced by the head of the Kiev military administration, Sergei Popko.
“According to preliminary information, this phenomenon was the result of the fall of a NASA space satellite to Earth,” he wrote to Telegram.
According to Popko, the air raid warning was issued to avoid victims of falling debris.
NASA previously warned that the 300-kilogram RHESSI (Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager) satellite, which has been in space since 2002 to study the Sun, will fall to Earth on April 19. The satellite was decommissioned in 2018. Most of the satellite, as noted, is expected to burn up in the atmosphere.
The space agency did not comment on the epidemic situation in Kiev. Meanwhile, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics astronomer Jonathan McDowell said on Twitter that the window for the satellite to enter the atmosphere will only open between 1:50 a.m. and 3:50 a.m. Moscow time. Its flight path includes South America, North Africa, Central Asia and China.
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