Green lasers were spotted over the Hawaiian Islands last month, and astronomers think a Chinese satellite was to blame.
The Subaru-Asahi Star Camera on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, photographed green laser lights in the hazy sky over Maunakea, Hawai’i, on January 30, according to a tweet from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ).
CNET called the NASA satellite ICESAT-2/43613 “Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2” for its use of lasers in creating global elevation maps. The group, however, changed their mind later on.
NASA released an updated statement on February 6, claiming its researchers “performed a simulation of the trajectory of satellites that contain a comparable instrument and picked a most probable candidate as the ACDL instrument by the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite.”
A note of appreciation was written to NAOJ for their work in determining the source of the light. We sincerely, apologize for the disruption this incident has caused and for any potential harm it may have caused to the ICESat-2 crew.
Roy Gal, head of the University of Hawaii’s Institute of Astronomy, told KHON2 that the beams were from a Chinese pollution monitoring satellite.
There are so many great extras that it’s practically bursting at the seams… I would classify this spacecraft as a weather or topographical mapping satellite used for studying the atmosphere.
As Gal pointed out, the United States also possessed satellites with similar capabilities.
U.S. military jet planes have been frequently dispatched to destroy Chinese government surveillance satellites and other equipment that have repeatedly violated American airspace. The Chinese spacecraft poses no threat to the islands or their residents, even as tensions between the United States and China continue to rise.
Gal reassured the people of Hawaii and the rest of the world that there is no need for alarm. We always have planes in the air performing such measurements. Sometimes this sort of thing shows up on super-accurate topo maps.
Former Marine Forces Pacific chief of staff Ray L’Heureux was interviewed by the TV station to offer a different perspective on the military’s usage of lasers.
L’Heureux doubted that the Chinese would be interested in studying pollution on this side of the Pacific since they are “perhaps some of the most prolific polluters on the globe.”
People are “jittery,” L’Heureux added, so “I feel we simply need to be a little bit more cautious, aware.”