Experts say space junk burning through atmosphere happens frequently


3 photos
Save Story

Show 1 more video

Leer en español

Estimated read time: 2-3 minutes

This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.

SALT LAKE CITY — A display in the sky late Wednesday night caught thousands of people off guard, but the event was actually expected.

Pieces of a Chinese rocket hit the Earth’s atmosphere at 17,000 mph, creating quite the light show around 10:45 p.m. It was visible throughout the western U.S.

“That is so cool,” Mike Jensen said in a home video. “Oh, I’ve never seen anything like that in my life. It’s going to hit Beaver.

For the record, it didn’t.

In a video taken by Ryan Breivik, he can be heard saying, “Whoa, what in the world is that?”

The debris was actually space junk called “CZ-7 R/GB,” the remains of a Chinese rocket booster.

"The biggest rocket that China has and this top two-thirds piece is what came back down to Earth and basically flew through our skies last night, and I say ‘our’ meaning basically western northern America,” explained Patrick Wiggins, NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador to Utah.

It was visible for 45 seconds or more, depending on where it was seen.

There are 14,000 things tracking around the Earth right now, Wiggins said. Most of those are pieces of satellites that aren’t used anymore.

Clark Planetarium director Seth Jarvis showed a piece of a Utah State University experiment that was launched in 1985 and floated around in space for five years, before a space shuttle mission retrieved it.

Related:

“Its orbit had decayed to the point where had it not been recovered in 1990, it was within a month or less of burning up in the air,” Jarvis said.

Space junk or space debris falls to Earth quite often, but usually in remote areas, experts say.

“Most of the Earth is uninhabited — oceans, Arctic, Antarctic — so when they come down, people don't see them," Wiggins said. "But occasionally, like last night, people (see) it."

Wiggins said experts had a couple days’ notice the space junk was coming down. Satview.org predicted it would come down at 4 p.m. Thursday; another website was a little more accurate.

“There’s a place called CalSky.com that actually does predictions, and they called it almost to the minute, so we knew when it was going to be here,” Wiggins said.

(Photo: Red Cliffs Photography)
(Photo: Red Cliffs Photography)

“It is relatively rare, though, to see something like this,” even though it happens frequently, he said. “I get these predictions, a few of them every month: Something’s coming down, something’s coming down. But usually not here, and usually not over populated areas.”

Wiggins said most of the booster burned up in the atmosphere, “but it’s not uncommon to have pieces of rocket still make it all the way to the ground, so I’m going to be watching the next few days if anyone does pick up any pieces.”

Contributing: Viviane Vo-Duc

Photos

Related stories

Most recent Utah stories

Related topics

Utah
Keith McCord

    STAY IN THE KNOW

    Get informative articles and interesting stories delivered to your inbox weekly. Subscribe to the KSL.com Trending 5.
    By subscribing, you acknowledge and agree to KSL.com's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

    KSL Weather Forecast