A “meteor shower” that illuminated the sky in northern Western Australia earlier this week was actually the remains of a Chinese rocket that fell out of orbit.
Key points:
- Light rats lit up the sky over Broome in the early hours of Monday morning
- Experts say the light show was caused by a part of a Chinese rocket
- The object may have fallen to the ground somewhere in the vast interior of northern WA
Stripes of light illuminated Broome’s skies in the early hours of Monday morning, with resounding echoes throughout the city.
Several locals captured the moment in videos that were posted on social media, showing rubbish breaking and throwing the night sky around 12:30 on Monday morning.
Glen Brough said he got up late after a police chase near his home when he saw the light show, but thought the debris was missiles or flares.
“I was sitting on the sidewalk with my partner … and she said, ‘What’s this? And the sky was lit up, completely lit up, “he said.
“Honestly, we thought they were missiles.”
Light show caused by space debris
Harvard astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell told ABC that the light show was created by a piece of a Chinese Long March 3 rocket that exploded into the atmosphere.
The rocket stage launched in July last year and was left in geostationary orbit until, according to Dr. McDowell, it finally fell back to earth when its orbit was submerged in the atmosphere.
“This [the rocket] “It launched a communications satellite called Tian Lian, which is actually a relay satellite used by Chinese astronauts on the Chinese space station,” he said.
Using publicly available data from the U.S. Space Command, which tracks space debris in Earth orbit, Dr. McDowell traced the re-entry path of the rocket stage for the CBA.
“The road showed it was heading east above the entry point just above Broome and north of Australia, so both the direction is right and the time is right,” Dr McDowell said.
The beloved path of the remains through the skies of North Western Australia. (Provided by: Dr. Johnathan McDowell)
Kimberley astronomer Greg Quicke said the slow pace of the streaks captured in the images indicated they were space debris.
“It seems to me that space debris is entering the atmosphere and I’m saying it because of its speed,” Quicke said.
“If they’re meteors, they’re much faster than that.”
Dr. McDowell said it was possible that some fragments of the rocket that burned on Broome had even returned to Earth in Western Australia.
“Just a few weeks ago we had another stage of Chinese rockets that went down over Gujarat in India and parts of that stage survived,” he said.
“It’s not impossible that you can find the same thing in Western Australia; only a few small pieces of the rocket can survive re-entry and end up on the ground.”
This re-entry sighting comes just months after another piece of a Chinese rocket, used on a different mission, crashes on the other side of the moon.
Parts of a Chinese rocket burned in the atmosphere over Broome on Monday night, and loud noises were heard around the city. (Provided by: Tasha Thomson)
Space junk is a growing concern
According to Dr. McDowell, the Long March 3 rocket is the oldest widely used “workhorse” in China, which will be replaced by the largest Long March 5B rocket in the future.
Long March 5B is a potential concern, Dr. McDowell said, because it leaves a larger rocket stage in orbit that has led to large objects falling on cities in Africa in the past.
“This stage of 20-ton rockets once re-entered West Africa and there were 20-meter-long metal rods crashing into West African peoples,” Dr McDowell said.
Curtin University astronomer Hadrien Devillepoix said space agencies have always aimed for re-entry to uninhabited areas, so it’s rare to see them captured on video.
“The South Pacific, for example, is usually one of the preferred cemetery areas for spacecraft, but from time to time you get things like Skylab that went down Western Australia,” he said.
A piece of Skylab in the back of a truck in Kalgoorlie, after it crashed south of WA in 1979. (Western Australian State Library)
Locals heard loud sounds that posted images of the re-entry of the part of the rocket, and Mr Brough confirmed that it resounded through the city a minute after the light show ended.
“I think all of Broome’s dogs started barking. It was just a dog rash after that, and yes, it was pretty scary,” he said.
According to Dr. Devillepoix, it could have been hypersonic booms that are caused by objects re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere breaking the sound barrier.
“They’re basically the same noises you hear, if you have a hypersonic fighter through the atmosphere, it makes a pretty big shock wave,” he said.
“But it’s usually quite high in the atmosphere, so it’s usually unlikely that these shock waves will reach the ground … but it’s definitely possible.”
Despite the shock waves and how overwhelming it was to see how the moment was played out in real time, Mr Brough said he would stay with him for a while.
“I don’t usually sit awake at twenty-one in the morning. So, yes, it was something different.”
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Posted 10 hours ago 10 hours ago Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 3:59 AM, updated 8 hours ago 8 hours ago Wednesday, June 1, 2022 at 6:14 AM