On Thursday, several people in southern Sweden were able to witness a mysterious light phenomenon in the evening sky. One of them was Adin Kobaslic in Värnamo who at first was a little frightened by the unfamiliar light.
– I saw a light that I have never seen before, and it really came in my direction. For a while I thought it was fighter jets or rockets of some kind, he says.
Adin Kobaslic was sitting on the balcony talking to his girlfriend on the phone when he suddenly saw the mysterious light far away in the sky. At first he thought it was a floating lantern that is sent up into the air with the help of fire – then his thoughts turned to the war in Ukraine.
– I was a little bit scared at the beginning and thought that maybe it had to do with the war in some way, he says.
After a while he instead concluded that it was possibly a comet.
– When I looked more closely at the clips that I had filmed, I saw what I thought was a comet that had broken into several pieces that was moving parallel to the Earth.
Also Oscar Hultin in Skummeslövsstrand in Laholm municipality filmed the glowing streaks in the sky. “Damn! What the fuck!”, you hear him say in the clip. “It’s like bombs,” says another.
Expert: Likely space junk
But there were neither fighter jets nor rockets. Nor was it a floating lantern or a comet – and neither were aliens. According to Clas Svahn, chairman of UFO-Sweden, it was space debris that was on its way back down to earth.
– What you see is space junk that is about to re-enter the atmosphere. Either it is a larger satellite, or more likely a rocket stage that has been in orbit around the earth for a number of months or years, which is about to burn up and break into smaller pieces on its way over Sweden, he says.
It is not unusual for space debris to fall to earth, but it is not unusual for it to happen over Sweden.
– The earth is big and Sweden is small, but you don’t know yet if any part of it fell down here. There may be parts that have fallen into the sea, given the direction there is a high probability that it fell into the eastern Atlantic somewhere between Iceland and Norway.
According to Clas Svahn, the scrap should have come from the southeast, and then continued northwest over Småland and into Blekinge.
Can hit the ground
There is a risk of space debris hitting the Earth before it has time to burn up – it has happened both in terrains and on streets and ships in the past. When it comes to satellites, however, there are rules to follow to avoid impact on land.
– If you have a satellite in orbit around the Earth, and it is to be taken out of service, you must have enough fuel to send it to an area between Australia and Antarctica, which is a giant satellite graveyard, says Clas Svahn.
– But not everyone follows these rules, and not everyone has fuel on board. A rocket step doesn’t have that. But a satellite must have it, however, it is not always the case that they have one left.