China’s skies erupt: Blazing fireball, loud booms fuel UFO and space test speculation

The sky has lit up as a fireball shot through the skies of eastern China, causing wild speculation online.

Residents of Weifang, Rizhao, and towns across Shandong Province reported a strange cluster of lights tearing across the heavens on Friday before vanishing in a blinding flash.

Within seconds, the calm of the evening was broken by “two loud bangs, resembling artillery shells,” locals said.

The mysterious sighting was captured on multiple videos, now spreading like wildfire across Chinese social media. In the clips, a bright fireball appears to streak downward, then disappears altogether, prompting an avalanche of speculation.

Some viewers are convinced they just witnessed extraterrestrial history.

“UFO shot down,” one user declared.

Others went bigger: what if this wasn’t an accident at all, but the first live test of China’s planetary defence system?

“If China is really testing planetary defence systems, that’s actually pretty amazing,” one commenter wrote.

“The world needs more research into asteroid interception.”

Authorities, meanwhile, are pouring cold water on the frenzy.

Officials insist they have “not received any information regarding an interception” and have made no formal statements confirming a space test, The Sun reported.

But the timing is intriguing.

China has been quietly advancing its space defences for years, with plans to strike an asteroid with a spacecraft, a mission that, if successful, would make it only the second country after the United States to pull off such a feat.

Wu Weiren, chief designer of China’s lunar exploration programme, recently said the goal was “defending against asteroids,” signalling just how serious Beijing is about planetary protection.

Earlier this year, reports revealed that China’s State Department for Science and Technology had posted job ads for “planetary defence” recruits, graduate-level science talent tasked with building asteroid monitoring systems and early warning networks.

The urgency is not abstract. Scientists have been tracking a so-called “city-killer” asteroid — 2024 YR4 — which is estimated to be 40 to 100 metres wide and could carve a crater the size of a metropolitan centre if it hit Earth.

ESA projections currently show its path intersecting with Earth’s orbit on December 22, 2032.

Researchers say a collision is unlikely but are racing to develop deflection methods, from smashing kinetic impactors into rogue space rocks to using nuclear blasts to nudge them off course.

And so, the mystery of Friday night remains unsolved: a fireball, two deafening booms, and a public left wondering whether they had just seen a UFO, a falling asteroid, or a glimpse into the future of humanity’s planetary defence.