Monday, 11 August 2025, 09:59
A phenomenon, that could have been interpreted as the luminous streak of light of a meteoroid, crossed Malaga and Andalucía on Sunday, 10 August, and fascinated those who had the chance to witness it. The fireball passed over Spain around 11.49pm and many managed to capture it as it travelled through the sky in Andalucía, Murcia and the southern part of Alicante, before heading towards the Balearic Islands. But what exactly was it, if not a meteor?
According to astrophysics researcher José María Madiedo, the light phenomenon was caused by the “re-entry of an artificial object into the Earth’s atmosphere”. The object, “probably a satellite, entered the atmosphere at about 29,000km/h over the Atlantic Ocean, flew over the Iberian Peninsula and continued towards the Mediterranean. It was not the fall of a meteorite”.
Jose Maria Madiedo
The expert explained that the artificial object became incandescent when it entered the atmosphere, generating a fireball that started at an altitude of 118 kilometres over the Atlantic Ocean and moved in a north-easterly direction. “It broke into a multitude of fragments,” Madiedo said.
A Starlink satellite?
According to Madiedo, the most likely hypothesis is that the fragments that survived their abrupt passage through the Earth’s atmosphere fell into the Mediterranean Sea. “We are currently trying to identify the object that caused this phenomenon. It could be a Starlink satellite,” he said.
This luminous event was captured by the detectors that the Smart project has in different observatories on the Iberian Peninsula. It is a research project headed by Madiedo as part of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) coordinated by the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía.