Categories: Launches

Spiral Seen Over the Middle East Likely Russian Missile

Remember the Norway Spiral back in 2009 and the Australian Spiral in 2010? On June 7, 2012 there was another swirling spiral of light, this time see in the skies over the Middle East. People across the region reported seeing a “UFO” and soon videos began showing up on YouTube.

The strange sight has been confirmed to be a Russian ballistic missile test of the Topol ICBM from the Kapustin Yar firing range near Astrakhan in southern Russia.

In several videos from Israel, Syria, Iran and other Middle East, the object started out looking somewhat like a comet and then started spiraling.

But this missile wasn’t out of control. Alan Boyle from MSNBC’s Cosmic Log talked with space analyst Jim Oberg, who said the Topol’s “third-stage spin is a ‘feature,’ not a malfunction, and may be associated with guidance, or decoy deploy, or enhancing hardness against U.S. boost-phase antimissile weapons.”

Oberg also noted a few other “coincidences” of why this particular missile test was seen while other similar tests haven’t been viewed. If the Russians were testing the associated warhead’s ‘penaids’ — “penetration aids to frustrate tracking and targeting by U.S. anti-missile systems,” this would result in a trajectory that was higher than normal, allowing it to be seen from a greater distance.

Another contributing factor, Oberg said, is “It’s June — near the time of the ‘midnight sun’ in northern latitudes. That means sunlight is streaming over the pole, throughout the night. Something in the northern sky above the atmosphere over Kazakhstan would be backlit by that sunlight.”

Here’s another video.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/

Recent Posts

The Moon has Two Grand Canyons, Carved in Minutes by an Asteroid Impact

Our Moon continues to surprise us with amazing features. Scientists recently shared new information about…

7 hours ago

Is Methane the Key to Finding Life on Other Worlds?

How would detecting methane help astronomers identify if exoplanets, or even exomoons, have life as…

9 hours ago

Space Junk Could Re-Enter the Atmosphere in Busy Flight Areas

In the more than 60 years since the Space Age began, humans have sent more…

12 hours ago

There’s a Way to Make Ringworlds and Dyson Spheres Stable

The idea of Dyson Sphere’s has been around for decades. When Freeman Dyson explored the…

1 day ago

Water Arrived in the Final Stages of Earth's Formation

Roughly 4.6 billion years ago, the Sun was born from the gas and dust of…

1 day ago

An Amazing JWST Image of a Protostar

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been giving us a fabulous new view on…

1 day ago