A streak of bright lights across the southeastern US skies on Saturday night was no natural phenomenon, but rather a defunct Chinese satellite reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The SuperView 1-02 satellite, launched in 2016, had been decommissioned and left to burn up over New Orleans, Louisiana.
The American Meteor Society received 152 witness reports of the fireball sighting, which were initially dismissed as “not a true fireball.” However, astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell later identified the source as the Chinese imaging satellite. The satellite was part of a constellation for civilian remote sensing and had been in an elliptical orbit instead of a circular one.
The reentry highlighted concerns about non-operational space junk littering Earth’s orbit. With over 27,000 pieces of orbital debris currently being tracked by the Department of Defense, there is a risk of collision with other spacecraft. The European Space Agency is developing ways to improve spacecraft reentry capabilities to help reduce this risk.
The incident serves as a reminder of the need for better regulation of space junk and the importance of designing future spacecraft to minimize damage during decommissioning. With the launch of the Destructive Reentry Assessment Container Object (DRACO) in 2027, scientists are working towards a better understanding of reentry science to reduce this risk.
Source: https://gizmodo.com/chinese-satellite-burns-up-over-new-orleans-creating-fireballs-in-the-sky-2000543300