‘Meteorite’ seen in four Australian states may be Russian space junk
Baku, July 11 (AZERTAC). A BRIGHT object that streaked across Australian skies last night was most likely part of a Russian weather satellite.
Social media lit up from about 9.45pm with reports of a bright object with a long tail burning across the sky in Victoria, NSW, Tasmania and South Australia.
There was even a report of a sighting in southwest Queensland.
Sydney observatory astronomer Melissa Hulbert says what was believed to be a meteor was more likely part of a Russian satellite launched from Kazakhstan.
“It looks like it was the upper-stage of a Soyuz’s rocket that was launched a few days ago,” Ms Hulbert said.
“Apparently the tracking and impact prediction matched, time and location, what we saw.”
She said the object seen over Australian skies would have been a piece of the rocket designed to fall away as part of the launch of the satellite.
“It’s kind of like the Apollo mission,” she said.
“Parts would be dropped off at various points throughout the mission.”
The object would have had a diameter of about 3.35m and a length of about 1.5m, she said.
Astronomical Society of Victoria president Ken Le Marquand said the colours reported to have been seen also indicated it was man-made.
“The images I’ve seen show a lot of different colours,” Mr Le Marquand told said.
“When you get lots of colours it usually means there’s different materials in there, man-made materials,” he said.
“The fact they saw all these colours in it could indicate it’s made of different materials.”
Mr Le Marquand also pointed to a Twitter post by Nobel prize winning Australian National University Astronomer Brian Schmidt.
“So our fireball may well have been a piece of space junk,” Prof Schmidt wrote, linking to data showing the trajectory of meteor decay.
Monash astronomer Michael Brown replied that he had the same idea.
“Space junk crossed my mind too. Travelling close to horizontal and taking a long (time) to burn up,” he wrote.
Other news in this section
