 |
The Prime Minister's Office wants residents in Harbour Mille, N.L., to know it was not a missile they saw in their evening sky.
But the PMO, or any government agency, can't or won't explain what flashed over the coast of the tiny, rural village Monday night, sparking growing curiosity in the town and beyond.
“There is no indication that there was ever a rocket launch,” Prime Minister Steven Harper's press secretary Dimitri Soudas said in an e-mail to QMI Agency.
On Monday night, Darlene Stewart spotted the object while she was outside in her yard and took a photo of it. She told media outlets she hoped to blow up the image on her computer screen to see what it was, but even then she couldn't make out what it was exactly.
The image appears to be the shape of a rocket, leaving a trail behind it. Neighbour Emmy Pardy told CTV that the item was “a humungous bullet, silver-grey in colour and it had flames coming out of the bottom and a trail of smoke.”
Suspicions that it might have been a missile continued to grow after reports that France launched a M51 from a submarine off its shores in the Atlantic as part of missile testing. An M51 has a range of 8,000 km. France and Newfoundland are 4,000 kms apart.
Since the sighting on Monday, there's been much talk in the small town by residents who have been speculating about what they saw in the night sky, debating anything from the missile theory to debris falling from the atmosphere, or maybe even an alien spacecraft.
Humber-St. Barbe-Baie Verte Liberal MP Gerry Byrne has said he wants answers from the federal government about what exactly they know about the incident.
Fellow Liberal Judy Foote, the MP for Random-Burin-St. George, has also spoken out, asking federal officials to tell residents what's happening and give reassurances there's no need to worry.
The RCMP, meanwhile, has concluded its investigation, saying there was no debris or evidence found and it is “an unexplained sighting.”