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This morning in Moscow, a massive green fireball raced through the sky, with scientists suggesting it is probably space junk.
S
I saw something that looked exactly like this over rural Missouri in 2022. It turned the sky bright green for three or four seconds.
W
Same in rural Arkansas back in about 2014
O
Same in the South Shore of Massachusetts about 15 or 20 years ago. Middle of the night. Super bright. Very green. And bits kinda falling off the back like the video.
P
Same in south TX in late 90s. I think these are just bolides and normal.
W
I just learned a new astronomical word. Thanks! > A bolide is a large, exceptionally bright meteor that often explodes in the atmosphere, producing a bright flash and a sonic boom.
E
Are we missing a weather satelite?
S
I hope it’s an Elon satellite.
G
They’re designed to fall back to earth…
A
It [probably is](https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a68967712/starlink-satellites-falling-from-the-sky/)
I
Man that article is alarmist. Kessler syndrome in low earth orbit is a non-issue as the earth’s atmosphere can bring debris down within a couple of years. As for the ozone layer, I’d need to see the data. 5 spacex satellites vs 100 tonnes of asteroids per day, I don’t think the spacex satellites will make a difference.
T
There is definitely going to be an increase in atomized aluminum in the atmosphere. Regardless of how alarmist an article might be, the fact remains that simple math tells us the concentration of atomized aluminum in the atmosphere IS going up. We don’t actually know if this will be a problem or not, but we won’t know if we don’t pay attention enough to find out.
S
Starlink sattelites are nowhere near large enough to cause such a light show in the first place. The anti elon circle jerk is getting as bad as the pro elon circjerk used to be.
S
OMG, and it’s still going to happen? I might just have to alter a fricken SKYLAB joke from my youth…. The new version would be, “today’s weather report: Partly cloudy with a high of 25 degrees, with a chance of scattered Space-X in the afternoon…
F
It’s just Elon bringing more of his kind to Earth.
M
U mean Elon in a satellite?
S
That sounds acceptable.
N
same here – Michigan like in 98 and there was a bad smell shortly after
L
Same in Iowa in late 2014. Flew right over a lake & me & the person I was with at the time actually pulled over & went to look to see if anything fell into the lake, but we didn’t say anything. Looked like it was close though, like it just flew right into the lake.
E
That’s where Trump came from.
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E
This guy gets it.
K
Space garbage with a high copper content the copper burns green
C
*copper thieves screaming in agony*
K
Just hacking the satellites and crashing them where they want to harvest lol
P
It’s green almost entirely because of it’s altitude. Between 60-150ish miles in altitude, the atmosphere is mostly just molecular oxygen, which glows green when ionized. It’s the same reason why auroras are green. Things falling through it at high speed create a lot of heat from friction with the air, so they ionize the air and glow green.
G
I would have assumed this was a lot lower at this point. Must have been a pretty big to be that bright and fast in the 60-150 range.
P
The small streaking meteors you see that look like this but cross the sky in a few seconds, are usually about the size of a baseball-basketball. This piece of space junk was probably an old satellite or a piece of a rocket. It’s just far away, which is why it appears so low on the horizon.
S
“And I’m sorry for us The dinosaurs roam the earth The sky turns green Where I end and you begin” Side note: I have seen the sky turn green at night as well. I was with a friend, we didn’t see a comet but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t one. But the sky lit up green for a few seconds.
F
I will eat you alive.
R
I remember this. That was the talk of the town for quite awhile. My brother got a good look at it in Ironton.
S
A long time ago I did research on the Air Force’s UFO investigations. IIRC there were people reporting stuff very similar to this as UFOs.
C
Could also be a meteor. I assume the color has to do with the composition of the object. I saw numerous of them with different colors. Blue and Green were the most common.
R
I witnessed very similar event as shown in this video, including the green tail, over the Sonoran Desert maybe 10-12 years ago. I reported it to an international sighting organization, was substantiated by numerous other civilian and government observations, ultimately determined to be a meteor. A local AFB even mustered in response, it was impressive.
H
Was on a float trip in southern MO earlier this summer and saw something similar. Green and purple moving parallel to the horizon.
_
Colorado, early 70’s. Never seen anything like it since.
R
Saw one a few hours west of San Antonio back in 2009.
W
Didn’t look like space junk. Looked like a meteor.
E
In brightest day…
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Starlink satellite [self-decommissioning](https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/science/elon-musks-starlink-satellites-are-falling-like-fireballs-raising-concern-among-experts/articleshow/124468841.cms). They try to do it over oceans, but I’m sure many of them occur over land. These will become far more common as more of the initial satellites launched reach their end of life.
L
Yup. Up to 5 a day https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/satellites/a68967712/starlink-satellites-falling-from-the-sky/
S
Wow that is terrible
C
This seems bad
K
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think this is actually kind of a good thing? Decommissioning by burning up in the atmosphere reduces accumulation of space debris in LEO. The goal is to prevent a Kessler syndrome situation. Besides, I think most or all of it just gets atomized in reentry.
T
Yes! Though it’s incredibly wasteful over the long term. Quick math – The range of one to five a day, let’s round that down to an average of two per day for the sake of being forgiving. Current Starlink launches carry 28 satellites, with a historical launch capacity of up to 60 satellites for earlier models. So that would be somewhere around 26 launches a year to maintain the current Starlink population. I don’t know the health implications of burning up the materials these satellites are made of, but I do know that older models of Starlink satellites (the ones from the 60-unit launches) were over 250kg/560lbs. The current satellites are about 800kg/1,700lbs. That’s a lot of metals to be wasting, all virtually unrecoverable. As the newer satellites become the dominant population of the array, that’s over 584 METRIC TONS of metal aerosolized in the atmosphere every year. At least if we assume 2 deorbits a day. Currently, the number is likely just shy of 200 metric tons of metal a year.
A
Lets not forget the 26 launches a year, the Falcon 9 emits 28,000 tonnes of GHG per launch. That’s 728,000 tonnes of GHG per year :/
G
And that’s presuming none of them fail to decommision properly and still slowly create a Kessler syndrome situation anyway. Starlink isn’t exactly an eco-friendly company despite what they pretend
B
Since they are in LEO, if they fail to decommission correctly, they will still fall into the atmosphere anyway. No Kessler there.
A
Kessler syndrome is not a concern for Starlink sats, as they are so low earth orbit that they’d decay in very little time (5 years if all control is lost).
K
Wow, yeah, that is a lot. I wonder if we could make satellites that carry their own reentry capsule so that they can fold up and encase themselves before deorbiting. Maybe if there was a way to make retrieval logistically possible, we could recover precious metals and prevent pollution of the upper atmosphere.
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