‘Meteor shower’ over Australia truly Russian rocket re-entering environment
There had been a number of experiences from Victoria and Tasmania of a vivid mild streaking throughout the sky leaving a path of what seemed to be flames.
The object was thought by some individuals to be a meteor, however the Australian Space Agency stated it was likely man-made.
“The flashes of light seen across Melbourne skies overnight were likely the remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere,” the company stated in a press release.
“Launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket occurred from Plesetsk Cosmodrome earlier in the evening. According to Russian authorities the launch placed a new generation ‘GLONASS-K2’ global navigation satellite into orbit.”
The house company stated Russian authorities gave discover of the launch and the remnants of the rocket had been deliberate to re-enter the environment into the ocean off the south-east coast of Tasmania.
“The Australian Space Agency will continue to monitor the outcomes of this re-entry with our government partners.”
Astronomer Alan Duffy from Swinburne University advised ABC in Australia that the colors produced as the item streaked throughout the sky steered it was man-made materials.
“So, pieces were coming off this object and in turn they were burning so what this means is that what we are seeing up there is something very large, it’s travelling very fast,” Professor Duffy advised ABC Radio Melbourne.
“It’s coming down from orbit some 7 kilometres per second.”