Possible rocket body reentry seen last night.

I received numerous reports of what people thought was a shooting star or what many knew was something breaking up on re-entry into our atmosphere. It’s clear from the pictures, and some video that I received that it was some piece of either space junk or an old rocket body re-entering the atmosphere. 

Video: Caution some strong language.

 

Pictures:

These were from

 

These are from Joshua Dye in Indian Trail:

Lots of sightings across the U.S.

If you saw it you weren’t alone. The American Meteor Society reporting page was full of reports/ Notice all around 1:30-1:40 am EDT and the duration of the fireballs all suggest more than a shooting star. Shooting stars or meteors last just a second or less, not long like something burning up on reentry like this.  More reports here–>American Meteor Society

So What was it?

I’m still researching this or waiting word from some of the space friends in the know. I think it was an early reentry of the SL-6 Rocket Body 2 which is part of the Russian Cosmos 2196 Missle Early Warning system. The path was over our area, but that reentry was supposed to happen over Russia. My guess, it happened earlier, or this could be some other space junk that came in unscheduled.

Bill Cooke at the NASA Meteoroid Environments Office in Huntsville, AL said this.

“There was a bright event seen over several SE states around 12:29:30 AM CDT – We also picked it up on our meteor cameras. The object moved too slow for meteor (only 14,500 mph), was visible for over 30 seconds, and fragmented into multiple pieces, suggesting that it was possibly a re-entering piece of space junk. The Department of Defense keeps track of such critters, so they would be the ones to confirm this.”