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Home » News » Boeing 747 Captain Captures Mysterious Bright Light Racing Through Night Sky
News

Boeing 747 Captain Captures Mysterious Bright Light Racing Through Night Sky

Matthew Klint Posted onMay 3, 2022November 14, 2023 3 Comments

a view of the night sky from a plane window

A Boeing 747 cargo pilot captured an odd streak of bright light that appeared to race across the night sky during a recent overnight flight. Its origin has now been revealed.

Bright Light In Night Sky Captured By 747 Pilot No Longer A UFO

Christiaan van Heijst, a prolific aviation photographer and 747 cargo pilot, was flying CAL Cargo Air Lines flight 573 from Tel Aviv (TLV) to Liege, Belgium (LGG) on April 29, 2022 when he noticed a bright light in the dark night sky.

He captured this video:

On his blog, van Heijst explained that his initial thought was this was the International Space Station, but that seemed unlikely:

Flying north-west over a cloudy Austria, we suddenly noticed a bright light starting to pop up and move in a roughly northerly direction. Judging by the speed, I initially thought we saw the International Space Station passing by, though the heading was not along ISS flying tracks and its exceptional brightness did not make sense, since there was no way the sunlight would be able to reflect from across the horizon as we were on the darkest time of night.

Speed and direction remained steady, though the light seemed to grow a large and diffuse cloud around it, as if it left exhaust gasses, growing ever larger and dimmer as it traversed the skies, until it eventually crossed the horizon a few minutes later as a huge dim ‘blob’ of light in the upper atmosphere or low-earth orbit.

Upon request, German Air Traffic Control (Rhein) was not aware of any high-altitude military activities.

For two days the source of the object remained a mystery.

It was later discovered that what van Heijst had witnessed was the de-orbit burn of a Russian rocket called Angara.

Russia’s Angara 1.2 rocket has launched a payload for the Russian Aerospace Forces, the VKS RF. This is Angara 1.2’s first operational flight, after one suborbital test flight to verify that all systems worked and three test flights of the Angara-A5 variant to prove its ability to launch payloads to a geostationary orbit.

Not much is known about the mission, with the identity of the payload yet to be uncovered and multiple potential payloads possibly onboard the rocket. All that is known is that the spacecraft has been designated Kosmos 2555 after successfully deploying from the rocket.

The most likely payload is a radar satellite, intended for use by the Russian military…

Mystery solved.

CONCLUSION

A 747 pilot captured an odd video of a bright moving object from the cockpit of his flight to Belgium. It turns out the UFO has now been identified as a Russian rocket.

image: jpcvanheijst / Instagram

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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3 Comments

  1. Joe Chivas Reply
    May 3, 2022 at 8:51 am

    The Russians are trying to de-nazify outer space now.

  2. 747always Reply
    May 3, 2022 at 11:33 pm

    That’s what the Cabal wants you to think. This was actually a signal being sent to the aliens to send the med beds

  3. Jetemiah Reply
    May 3, 2022 at 11:34 pm

    They must have watched the moon Nazis sci-fi movie and decided to take action.

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