The re-entry of what is believed to be a defunct Chinese satellite over US skies last week created a spectacular light show but posed no real danger, according to space experts, who also said the event was unintentional.
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A giant fireball that was spotted piercing the atmosphere in a giant fireball above Louisiana at around 10pm local time on Saturday was probably the remains of a Gaojing SuperView 1-02, a high-resolution commercial imaging satellite, they said.
A social media user captured a video of the event, taken while he was outside his Prairieville home with friends. “What is that? “Wow. This was real. Just happened at 22:08 CST Louisiana. Meteor shower,” he posted.
“It was crazy. Took us off guard by the fire,” he added later. Observers across social media continued to report sightings as the fireball streaked northward, illuminating the skies over Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer and satellite tracker, saw the posts and identified the event as a space debris re-entry. Checking the US Space Force’s tracking data for possible candidates, he found a match with the Gaojing 1-02 orbit.
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Gaojing 1-02 weighed 560kg (1,234.5 pounds) and was operational from late 2016 to early 2023, at an altitude of 530km (329 miles) where it captured high-resolution images for resource surveys, environmental monitoring, and mapping in China.
The satellite, which was decommissioned two years ago, had no active manoeuvring capability and it was not possible to target a specific landing location, McDowell said. No reports of debris recovery have emerged since its re-entry.