Uh-oh. Wow.
St. Petersburg— U.S. satellite imagery detected heat around a Russian passenger jet just before it went down in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, two U.S. officials said Tuesday. But the discovery doesn't resolve the mystery of why the plane crashed, killing all 224 aboard.
A missile striking the Metrojet Airbus A321-200 was ruled out because neither a launch nor an engine burn had been detected, one of the officials said.
The infrared activity that was detected could mean many things, including a bomb blast or that an engine on the plane exploded due to a malfunction.
Aviation analyst Paul Beaver said the heat picked up by the satellite "indicates that there was a catastrophic explosion or disintegration of the airplane," but doesn't reveal the cause.
"It doesn't tell us if it was a bomb ... or if somebody had a fight in the airplane with a gun — there is a whole raft of things that could happen in this regard," he said.