A fantastic fireball illuminated the night sky over some southern states in the United States this weekend, however that was no meteor. It was Chinese area scrap.
The fireball, which spotted over parts of Missisippi, Arkansa and Missouri on Saturday night (Dec. 21), was the death knell of a defunct Chinese business Earth imaging satellite called Superview 1-02 (or GaoJing 1-02) as it burned up in Earth's environment. Video of the Chinese area scrap burning up reveals it as a number of streaks of items flaring in the night sky.
“The industrial imaging satellite 高景一号02星 (GaoJing 1-02, Superview 1-02), run by Beijing-based SpaceView (北京航天世景信息技术有限公司) reentered above New Orleans at 0408 UTC Dec 22 (1008 pm CST Dec 21) heading northbound towards MS, AR, MO and was commonly observed,” composed Jonathan McDowell, an astrosphycist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellite launches and reentries, in a post on X. He likewise shared the obvious track of the area particles.
A piece of Chinese satellite area scrap disintegrate in the night sky as a fireball in this video still image caught by Luke Matheson in Rison, Arkansas on Dec. 21, 2024. (Image credit: Luke Matheson)
The industrial imaging satellite 高景一号02星 (GaoJing 1-02, Superview 1-02), run by Beijing-based SpaceView (北京航天世景信息技术有限公司) reentered above New Orleans at 0408 UTC Dec 22 (10.08 pm CST Dec 21) heading northbound towards MS, AR, MO and was commonly observed pic.twitter.com/GqbwpsAdb8December 22, 2024
The fireball showed up to stargazers throughout a minimum of 12 states throughout the southern U.S., with the American Meteor Society getting a minimum of 120 reports from Texas to Florida, and as far north as Indiana and Illinois.
Christopher Rainer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi, informed Channel 3 WLBT news that his company got some reports of the fireball after 10 p.m. regional time on Dec. 21. At the time, NWS authorities thought it was a meteor breaking apart in the upper environment that positioned no risk to individuals on the ground, WLBT reported.
The Superview 1-02 satellite was among 2 Superview 1 satellites released into orbit in December 2016 for SpaceView by a Chinese Long March 2D rocket. (The other satellite was, maybe unsurprisingly, called Superview 1-01.) The launch was not without its missteps.
Rather of releasing the 2 satellites into a circular orbit about 330 miles (530 kilometers) above Earth, the satellites were put into elliptical (or oval-shaped) orbits that ranked from 133 miles to 326 miles (214-524 km) above Earth, according to tracking information from the U.S. Air Force Joint Space Operations. With time, the 2 satellites had the ability to slowly raise their orbits to start their objective.
The SuperView 1 satellites were China's first-ever business high-resolution Earth observations satellites. Each weighed about 1,235 pounds (560 kgs) and brought cams with a resolution of about 0.5 per pixel.
SpaceView released a series of extra SuperView satellites in subsequent years to develop an Earth-imaging constellation of spacecraft.
