Fireball – Not Part of a Meteor Shower

A Beehive of Satellites

It is not a meteor shower? There is little major meteor shower activity until April, but recently over daytime skies in Texas (from Austin, to Houston and as far north as Plano) a fireball was seen plummeting toward Earth. It has yet to be determined if it was debris from a recent satellite collision between a non-working Russian satellite and an active US satellite over Siberia on Tuesday February 10th Scientists believe that the collision has created about one thousand tennis ball-sized debris particles, but are virtually unsure of the exact sizes. This adds to the many already present pieces of space junk that orbit around our Earth.

If the debris would enter Earth’s atmosphere it could produce spectacular fireballs in the sky and most would disintegrate from the ram pressure created by such an event. The real threat is to the current working satellites that orbit Earth and possibly high altitude airplanes. I personally believe that this debris is unlikely to hit the Earth. The likelihood that the debris will run into other spacecraft is still uncertain.

Currently the US Department of Defense monitors over eighteen thousand objects that orbit our Earth and debris from this collision could stay in space for years. There is a possibility that some debris will enter the atmosphere at any time and cause meteoric displays in the sky.