A mysterious “ballistic missile” has been found in the sea near an island popular among tourists.
An investigation has been launched into an object which, according to reports, left France on March 29, flew over Barcelona, and landed in the near between Mallorca and Menorca on April 1.
The fireball, identified by the institute as SPMN290324ART, made its journey over Spanish airspace around 11:59 p.m., leaving astronomers and enthusiasts bewildered.
Spanish Supreme Council for Scientific Investigations is looking into the incident through its Fireball and Meteor Research Network and its Institute of Space Science.
The Fireball Network initially said it could be an artificial fireball, potentially a ballistic missile that vanished into the sea.
Ballistic missiles follow a predetermined path to deliver warheads to specific targets, which is why this incident sparked alarm.
But the German Air Force posted on X (formerly Twitter) that it has ruled out the possibility the object could be a missile.
The German authorities have instead confirmed that it was an artificial object, most likely a satellite from the Starlink network of the multibillionaire owner of Tesla, Elon Musk.
“In our opinion, it was the re-entry of a Starlink satellite,” explained the sources in Germany.
This comes one month after SpaceX said it had plans to remove 100 Starlink satellites from orbit due to a design flaw which could cause them to fail and fall to Earth.
Spain’s National Research Council has issued a refutation of the ballistic missile theory, saying the object was likely a satellite or a piece of a space rocket returning to Earth from orbit.
Josep Maria Trigo, from the Bolides and Meteorites Research Network at the Institute of Space Sciences, emphasised that such “re-entry” of space debris into the Earth’s atmosphere is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon.
But according to the European Space Agency, there’s just a one in 100 billion chance of a human being injured by space debris.
