A bright fireball that lit up the skies across four states in the United States and caused a huge stir has been revealed to be the result of a fiery crash of a SpaceX Starlink satellite. At the time of the incident, many people living in different states thought the spectacular light display was a meteor.
36 Different Reports Collected
The American Meteor Society received a total of 36 separate reports of the remarkable fireball that passed over Colorado, Kansas, Texas and Oklahoma. The sightings were particularly concentrated around the Oklahoma City and Dallas-Fort Worth areas. Many witnesses excitedly took to social media to share the news, assuming it was a meteor. However, after further investigation, it was determined that the Starlink-2022 spacecraft, part of a group of 4 satellites launched in 23 as part of SpaceX’s Starlink 54-4682 mission, crashed into Earth.
The bright object was likely a Starlink satellite burning up in Earth's atmosphere before colliding with our planet, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer and spacecraft tracker at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The event represents an extremely rare instance of a man-made object falling into space.
Kevin W., who lives in Texas and witnessed the event, described it as “the most impressive sight I have ever seen!” while another eyewitness from Canton, Texas, expressed his excitement by saying, “the most amazing thing I have seen in a long time!”
