Bright lights were seen in the skies over several parts of Malaysia on Wednesday night as a retired Nasa space telescope burned up in the earth’s atmosphere after 22 years in orbit.
Nasa said the satellite, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, burned up over Indonesia. The US Space Force confirmed that the 1.4-tonne spacecraft entered the upper atmosphere at about 22 times the speed of sound over Indonesia’s North Sumatra province, roughly 322km north of the equator.
Malaysia’s Space Authority Division confirmed on Friday that it had received preliminary information on reports of bright lights in Malaysian airspace that night.
The science, technology and innovation ministry said there had so far been no official reports of suspected space debris being found on land or in Malaysian waters. It advised the public not to touch any suspicious objects and to report them to the authorities immediately.
Launched in 2004, Swift spent its career studying the most powerful explosions in the universe, including more than 2,000 gamma-ray bursts. Intense solar activity in recent years pulled it down faster than expected, and a robotic mission to boost its orbit was called off after the rescue craft failed to get close enough.
The Space Force had put the risk to people on the ground as very low, at about one chance in 2,100 of anyone being harmed.