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Fireball not part of Soyuz rocket, Air Force says
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The loud boom and fiery object that lit up the sky over Maryland and Virginia Sunday night was not part of a Soyuz rocket. Yesterday I had reported on the rush to declare the sighting as Soviet space junk and the resulting controversy.
The Joint Space Operations Center at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California responded to inquiries this morning:
The JSpOC tracks over 19,000 manmade objects in space.
The "bright light" that was reported on the East Coast on Sunday, 29 March at 9:45 p.m. EST was not a result of any trackable manmade object on reentry.
Natural phenomena are not tracked by JSpOC professionals.
After the crash of a defunct Russian spy satellite and an Iridium telecommunications satellite in February ,alleged space junk sightings have increased well, astronomically. At one point, NOAA issued a warning about space debris from the crash.
Despite numerous reports of strange lights and even objects falling from the sky, so far very few of them have been traced to recent space junk. Most of the danger from space junk affects rocket launches and manned missions including the International Space station, the space shuttle, and Soyuz flights.
On March 12, astronauts aboard the space station had to take emergency shelter as space debris came dangerously close. During the just-concluded STS-119 mission to the station, mission managers had to plan spacewalks and spacecraft maneuvers around some space junk.
Here on Earth, a bright light streaking across the sky is most likely the natural phenomena: a meteor. Read more on meteors and fireballs.
Representative meteor image credit/ESO
Update: Nancy Atkinson at Universe Today notes that the investigation into whatever-it-was is continuing.
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