Fireballs were seen crossing the night sky in Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana, United States (US) on Wednesday (20/10) local time. The object is apparently a Russian satellite that failed to orbit.
The fireball emitted green, gold, and pink light, and left a bright trail behind it. About two minutes into space, the object broke into small pieces on its way down from orbit before crossing the border of the United States and Canada, somewhere above the Great Lakes.
"I saw it flashed across the sky. At first there was no tail, then a tail, then the tail disappeared," said eyewitness Stephanie Neal, a resident of Williamsburg, Ohio, quoted from The New York Times, Friday (10/22/2021).
The object is not an unexplained aerial phenomenon, as the Pentagon recently described, nor is it a meteor from the Orionid meteor shower, which peaked Thursday morning local time.
According to orbital trackers, the object is the recently launched Russian military satellite COSMOS 2551 that failed to orbit. The satellite then plunged and burned as it passed through Earth's atmosphere.
Some details about the satellite were also acknowledged by the Russian military. Initially, the Russian Defense Ministry said the launch and deployment of the satellite was successful. But shortly after reaching space, satellite trackers noticed a gradual decrease in the spacecraft's altitude.
Surveillance Satellite
Kosmos-2551 is a Russian reconnaissance satellite launched on September 9 from Russia's Plesetsk Cosmodrome. Unfortunately the satellite failed to survive, shortly after launch.
Jonathan McDowell, astronomer and satellite tracker at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted that although it entered Earth in the form of fireballs, COSMOS 2551 is not expected to injure anyone when dropped.
"The satellite is estimated to only weigh around 500 kg, and no debris is expected to reach the ground," he said.
COSMOS 2551 according to him has traveled the world 17 times a day since its launch, with its speed decreasing after each rotation due to friction with the atmosphere.
He explained that the speed at which it traveled to Earth was the difference between space debris from objects such as fireballs, meteors or space rocks.
At just 27,400 km per hour, objects like COSMOS 2551 travel much slower than shooting stars. In addition, it takes a relatively long time to break.