Mysterious Light Over Kyiv May Finally Be Explained

Air raid sirens menacingly rang out across Kyiv on Wednesday night as a blinding flash of light streaked across the dark skies over the Ukrainian capital. Fearing an airstrike from Russia, authorities advised residents to take shelter—but it now appears the panic may have been triggered by something altogether stranger.

Initially, some reports suggested that the glare might have been the result of a NASA satellite burning up in the atmosphere. The retired Reuven Ramaty High Energy Solar Spectroscopic Imager (RHESSI) satellite was predicted to crash to Earth sometime on Wednesday. But at the time of the flash, a NASA spokesperson said, the satellite had still been in orbit.

On Thursday, officials in Ukraine say they think they’ve finally gotten an answer. “We cannot identify what it was exactly, but our assumption is that it was a meteorite,” Igor Korniyenko, the deputy head of a control center at Ukraine’s space agency said. He added that experts still did not have enough data to figure out “the exact nature” of what led to the fiery display. “Our observation devices showed it was a powerful explosion. We recorded it and determined where it took place,” Korniyenko added.

Read more at The Daily Beast.