The GaoJing 1-02 imaging satellite burned up over the U.S. in a mesmerizing 'fireball' that some skywatchers mistook for a meteor shower.
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A photo of the satellite fireball over Gulfport in
Mississippi. |
A Chinese satellite has dramatically disintegrated over the
U.S. in a mesmerizing "fireball." The spacecraft's fiery demise was
visible across several states, footage reveals.
The GaoJing 1-02 commercial imaging satellite was traveling
at 17,000 mph (27,400 km/h) when it reentered our atmosphere above New Orleans
at 10:08 p.m CST (11.08 p.m. EST on Dec. 21). It then headed north towards
Mississippi, Arkansas and Missouri, Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at the
Harvard and Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, wrote on Bluesky.
"The sat has been space junk and dead as a doornail
since Jan 2023," McDowell said in response to a comment asking whether the
reentry was planned. "This was an uncontrolled reentry."
The GaoJing 1-02 satellite, or Superview 1-02, launched at
the end of 2016, according to NASA. McDowell noted on the social platform X
that the satellite was switched off almost two years ago, so it was only a
matter of time before it fell back down to Earth.
"Reentry of low orbit sats happen naturally, you have
to fire engines to reboost the orbit to avoid it, and this sat was switched off
almost 2 years ago," McDowell wrote.
As the satellite disintegrated in our atmosphere, social
media lit up with a series of photographs and videos of the event, while the
American Meteor Society received 120 reports of a "fireball." Some
skywatchers mistook the satellite for the Ursid meteor shower, which also
peaked over the weekend.
McDowell noted that the satellite was small enough to almost entirely burn up before hitting the ground, and it isn't yet clear whether any pieces survived.
Chinese rocket disintegrated over the Caribbean
The satellite is the second Chinese spacecraft to burn up
over North America in recent days. On Friday (Dec. 20), the Astronomical
Society of the Caribbean, or Sociedad de AstronomÃa del Caribe (SAC), filmed a
Chinese rocket disintegrating above Puerto Rico.
The Longmarch 4B, or CZ-4B rocket, launched from the Xichang
Satellite Launch Center on Aug. 16. The rocket was 145 feet (44 meters) long
and took the classified Yaogan-43 satellites to space, before losing altitude
over the next four months, Eddie Irizarry, a NASA solar system ambassador and
president of the scientific dissemination committee at SAC, reported for
EarthSky.
"The rocket body was gradually losing height,"
Irizarry wrote. "Eventually, atmospheric drag caused it to disintegrate as
it reached an altitude of around 70 miles (113 km) over Puerto Rico."