Home/BlogThousands of lucky onlookers got to see the upper stage of a Chinese rocket reenter the atmosphere and burn up over the western U.S. late last night. This nice video of the event was taken by Matt Holt over the Utah Valley, surrounded by excited “Pokemon nerds” (in Matt’s words).
Full video of meteor-like event @BadAstronomer pic.twitter.com/q37UzRZKpa
— Matt Holt (@mholt6) July 28, 2016
The debris was the upper stage of Long March 4B rocket launched a month ago from the Gobi Desert, carrying an electronic surveillance spy satellite:
A Long March 4B rocket launched June 26, 2016 carrying China’s second Shijian 16 electronic surveillance satellite. Credit: Xinhua
The rocket upper stage reentered about 12 hrs earlier than expected from orbital debris predictions made by The Aerospace Corporation, which provided this morning’s updated calculation of the reentry path, and the ring of visibility (given clear skies):
Saw it here in Las Vegas. The only thing that seemed strange was how slowly it appeared to move across the sky.
Probably a lot slower than a satellite, which move slowly, too, if you’ve ever spotted one at night. The debris would have deaccelerated through atmospheric drag.
Long March rocket?
Shades of Mousy Dung!
OT, but it’s time to play “Predict July UAH Global Anomaly”.
+0.29
+0.42
Incidentally, ANTARCTICA Sea Ice cover has reverted to the historical (by satellite records) averages. I remember being told, in no uncertain terms, that the increase of the previous few years was proof certain of global warming (don’t ask me why!) I guess the reduction this year also proves global warming.
We had been in the mood to serve the nation.