More than 150 witnesses sent reports and even videos of the phenomenon, for which they have not had to regret personal damage
A fireball streaked across the night sky over Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana early Wednesday. In the more than 150 reports received by the American Meteor Society (AMS), a group that is dedicated to collecting civil testimonies of flashes in the sky, they speak of lights in shades of green, gold, and pink. Some witnesses were even able to capture the images on video. What was that?
Gregory M, in his report details: «I saw it. I got to the balcony window, and the long tail had already come out. I looked at it for about 25 seconds. He threw between four and six red and green pieces. His head was much brighter than aircraft landing lights.
The trail was a luminous mist studded with rapidly fading white dots.’ For her part, Holly Wood, who was walking her dog around Cincinnati, thought it was a plane crash. “Then I thought that it was not possible, that it did not make sense.”
It was actually space debris disintegrating in our atmosphere. Specifically, a Russian military rocket called Kosmos-255 1 that was sent into space in early September but apparently failed shortly after. Although there has been no confirmation from the Russian authorities, several astronomers have compared the trajectory of this probe with the sightings. And they match perfectly. “Kosmos-2551 passed at the exact time predicted over the region and within the reentry time window of uncertainty given by Space Force. So I conclude that the identification with Kosmos-2551 is strong,” astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said on his Twitter account.
Not much is known about Kosmos-2551, except that it is a Russian reconnaissance satellite (many refer to it as a ‘ spy satellite ‘) that was heading in an orbital path over the Earth’s poles. Although the Russian Ministry of Defense stated that the launch had been a success, according to McDowell, the probe did not adjust to its orbit, so it was expected that in the end, it would end up falling back into the Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrating due to friction, how did it happen. “Ninety-nine percent certainty that it was a failure,” said McDowell, who also explained that, however, the satellite surely burned up in the atmosphere without reaching the ground, in addition to the fact that it is a situation that has occurred “a couple of times in the last few years» on the US
Other uncontrolled reentries
In fact, this last year has been quite ‘prolific’ in terms of surprising re-entries of space debris. For example, pieces of a SpaceX rocket ended up on a farm in Washington state in April. Or a month later, large remains of a huge Chinese rocket had the whole world on edge for days, since it was not known for sure where they would land. In the end, they ended up in the Maldives, in the Indian Ocean, although it caused quite a stir.
While the 1972 United Nations treaty holds nations liable for damage caused by objects launched from their territories, there are few international rules that restrict conditions in space and debris in orbit. In recent years, there have been many voices that have called for regulation on this issue. However, so far little has been done.
“As they go higher, they will go lower,” said Mike Hankey, an amateur meteor hunter who manages the AMS fireball database of recent cases of space debris causing fireballs on the Earth. neck. “It’s not really my favorite thing to work on, but there’s a lot more going on and the system can track them.”
