Fire in the sky
<p>Neil Zeller, a photographer in Calgary, Alberta, captured this image of a fireball as it streaked across the sky Monday over the region. It was observed in Idaho and several other U.S. states. Zeller told CBC news that he was west of Calgary, Alberta around 11 p.m. MT, taking pictures of the northern lights, when the fireball appeared. In Coeur d'Alene, Brandon Stone observed it at 9:55 p.m. PST.</p>
A large fireball observed streaking across the sky over North Idaho Monday night was not a meteor. It was burning debris from a Chinese rocket that launched a satellite in December.
Brandon Stone told The Press that he first witnessed what "almost looked like a jetliner with a heavy trail of flame behind it" around 9:55 from his window near the corner of Harrison Avenue and Fourth Street.
"I ran outside to see a cluster...of something streaking steadily though the sky heading north," Stone wrote, in an email. "It was breaking apart, expanding slowly as it flew, kind of like the Shuttle Columbia disaster footage."
Similar observations were reported throughout the West and Canada.
Maj. Martin O'Donnell, a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command, told the Associated Press it was a Chinese rocket booster that broke apart.
There were no reports of damage or injuries, according to O'Donnell.
By 7 p.m. Tuesday, the American Meteor Society - a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to researching meteors - had received 198 reports of a fireball seen over 10 western states as well as British Columbia and Alberta in Canada.
On the society's community-driven website, www.amsmeteors.org, Mike Hankey, a meteor enthusiast and researcher, wrote witnesses' descriptions of the flaming ball are typical of what is seen when space junk re-enters Earth's atmosphere.
"As the satellite breaks apart in the atmosphere, each nut, bolt or fragment of glass or metal will create a mini fireball. These objects generally travel much slower than fireballs and cover wider distances," Hankey wrote. "Most of the witnesses reported the event lasting up to 45 seconds, where as a normal fireball would last 3-5 seconds. The long duration time, witness descriptions and long distance of travel suggest this object was some type of space trash."
According to Hankey, NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office identified the sky event as the re-entry part of a Chinese rocket, likely one which launched the satellite Yoagan Weixing from the People's Republic of China on Dec. 27.
Utah-based NASA ambassador Patrick Wiggins told the Associated Press that most such events go unnoticed.
According to the NASA Orbital Debris Program office's website, orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov: "On average, one non-functional spacecraft, launch vehicle orbital stage, or other piece of catalogued debris has fallen back to Earth every day for more than 40 years. The majority of these objects do not survive the intense re-entry environment.
"For the minority which do survive in whole or in part, most fall harmlessly into the oceans or onto sparsely populated regions such as Siberia, the Australian Outback, or the Canadian Tundra."