A full investigation has been opened by The Fireball and Meteor Research Network (SPMN), of the Spanish Supreme Council for Scientific Investigations (CSIC) into an object which, according to various reports and video footage, left France on Friday, and then flew over Girona and Barcelona before ditching in the sea between Mallorca and Menorca at around midnight.
Experts at the Institute of Space Sciences of the CSIC said the mystery object, first sighted on Friday night could have been a weapon.
But, the German Air Force’s official X (formerly Twitter) has now ruled out the possibility the object could be a missile.
In fact, the German authorities have 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.
Spain’s National Research Council (CSIC) issued an official refutation of the ballistic missile hypothesis, saying that the observed object was most likely man-made - a satellite or fragment of a space rocket returning from Earth orbit.
Josep Maria Trigo, coordinator of the Bolides and Meteorites Research Network at the Institute of Space Sciences, which is part of the CSIC, has emphasised that such “re-entry” of space debris into the Earth’s atmosphere is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon.