Spiral Seen Over the Middle East Likely Russian Missile

By Nancy Atkinson - June 08, 2012 08:38 PM UTC | Space Policy

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 Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com