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Satellite linked with flash of light over Kiev has deorbited — website

Eye witnesses earlier told TASS they saw three bright flashes of light over the Ukrainian capital

NEW YORK, April 19. /TASS/. The US satellite RHESSI deorbited and burned up in the Earth atmosphere on Thursday, according to data posted on the Space Track website, which publishes data from the US Space Command.

The satellite, which was entered into the database under No. 27370, is now listed as deorbited. It had been launched on February 5, 2002 to observe solar flares and been operational until 2018, when it experienced communications difficulties and was decommissioned. The satellite remained in low Earth orbit, gradually descending due to atmospheric resistance.

Eye witnesses earlier told TASS they saw three bright flashes of light over the Ukrainian capital. Sergey Popko, the head of the city’s military administration, said later that they might have been caused by a NASA satellite reentering the atmosphere. A NASA spokesman subsequently denied the theory, saying none of the agency’s satellites reentered the atmosphere on Wednesday.

NASA previously reported it was expecting RHESSI to leave orbit on April 19. The agency said in a statement on its website that most of the satellite, which weighs about 300 kilograms, would burn as it travelled through the atmosphere, but some components could survive reentry. NASA assessed the risk of harm coming to anyone on Earth as very low.

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