Did A UFO Explode Over China?
Three, then later 8 unidentified objects were spotted falling from the sky and landing in Mengchangin of the Heilongjiang province about 6:00 am Friday according to Chinanews.com.
Mengchang villagers heard a big noise and then saw a big ball of fire falling down to a vegetable garden belonging to a villager. When they rushed to the scene they found a metal ball half covered by a layer with a jagged edge to it. Not knowing what it was, they took pictures and called the authorities.
Two other similar objects were spotted falling from the sky and down to the neighboring Baiquan county. Rumors started to fly as to what the origin of the strange pieces of metal could be that were falling from the sky. Luckily no one was hurt as one of the pieces was over 70 centimeters long and weighed over 40 kilograms. That would do some damage if it hit someone!
The Sadly Terrestrial Explanation To The Mystery Metal
The excitement about UFO metal was quickly washed away however when it was revealed that the metal sphere and other pieces of metal that fell on China were actually part of a Russian cargo rocket that had exploded shortly after launch.
A Russian Proton-M rocket carrying an Express-AM4R communications satellite crashed outside of Kazakhstan’s territory on Friday, about nine minutes after lift-off, Russia media outlet ITAR-Tass reported.
The crash was likely caused by a failure in one of the third stage’s steering engines, according to Oleg Ostapenko, the head of the Russian national space agency Roscosmos.
The rocket was about 100 miles into its ascent at the time and burned up in the atmosphere, the agency reported. It also quoted Ostapenko as saying that the rocket and all the debris had burned up in the atmosphere.
The mishap marks the second time a Proton rocket has destructed after lift-off within a year. In July, an unmanned Proton rocket exploded after lift-off over Kazakhstan.
The lost Express AM4R satellite, worth more than 200 million euros ($275 million), was described by its maker Astrium – a unit of the European aerospace group Airbus – as one of the most powerful satellites built in Europe, according to Reuters.
Although Russia claimed that the fragments of the rocket and its cargo burned up in the atmosphere and could not cause any damage, some Chinese media suspected that five unidentified flying objects spotted falling from the sky and landing in three villages in China’s Heilongjiang Province on Friday morning were parts of the rocket. Witnesses saw a fireball sweep across the sky before falling, chinanews.com reported. Photos online showed a round metal object with a jagged opening.
This isn’t stopping UFO sites from running with the original headlines and sensationalizing the whole event. Sadly that is all to common both in online and mainstream media.
