Green laser beams believed to be from a Chinese satellite were spotted over Hawaii amid Chinese objects breaching U.S. airspace.
Scientists at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) tweeted late last month that its Subaru-Asahi Star Camera on Mauna Kea “captured green laser lights” eerily shooting across the night sky in Maunakea.
“On Jan 28, 2023, HST, Subaru-Asahi Star Camera captured green laser lights in the cloudy sky over Maunakea, Hawai`i. The lights are thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613,” NAOJ tweeted on Jan. 28.
One week later, NOAJ said that the mysterious green beams may have been from the Chinese Daqi-1/AEMS satellite after the ICESat-2 team ran a simulation of satellite trajectories.
“We really appreciate their efforts in the identification of the light,” the space agency wrote. “We are sorry about our confusion related to this event and its potential impact on the ICESat-2 team.”
The strange incident comes after the U.S. Department of Defense took down a Chinese spy balloon that had been flying across the country earlier this month.
A senior defense official confirmed that the balloon was flying over sensitive sites to collect information.
“The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
Meanwhile, national security experts claim that the Chinese spy balloon was mapping out the location of missile silos in the U.S. One of the states where the balloon was noticed was Montana, which is home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is home to the country’s three nuclear missile silo fields.
Bryan Clark, Director of the Hudson Institute Center for Defense Concepts, said that the balloon may not have been “a direct threat” but could have allowed China to “obtain close-up visual imagery from different angles.”
“That could improve China’s ability to target U.S. missile silos and better understand the construction and layout of U.S. bomber bases in places like Montana and North Dakota where the balloon is flying,” Clark told The Daily Wire.
Since the balloon incident, the Air Force has been shooting down several foreign objects over the U.S. and Canada. Most recently, the U.S. shot down another high-altitude “object” flying at 40,000 feet over the frozen waters off Alaska on Friday.
