Chinese rocket debris creates fireball above Queensland

A huge fireball was seen in the sky above Queensland, Australia, late on Thursday night. Social media users shared videos of the space debris burning up as it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere.Professor Jonti Horner, an astronomer and astrobiologist at the University of Southern Queensland, explained that the bright light was a piece of a rocket that launched a Chinese satellite in 2019.

"The Chinese launched a GPS satellite called Beidou-3I3 back on 4th November 2019. The piece of the rocket has been tracked as a bit of space debris since - and people quickly linked it to the debris seen above Queensland. It's most likely that the rocket was entirely destroyed on re-entry, and nothing would have made it to the Earth's surface," he explained.

According to NASA, there were 15,214 catalogued pieces of space debris in orbit around the Earth as of November 2020. There are many smaller pieces that are not tracked.

Space junk has the potential to damage or destroy satellites. "That's why it's actually a really good idea to make your leftover junk burn up in Earth's atmosphere," said Horner.

Once it has fallen back to Earth in that way, it's removed from low Earth orbit and isn't there to smash into something else.While many Queensland residents were enjoying the sight of the bright lights in the sky, Horner was sadly asleep.

I've been really busy for the last couple of weeks, and so got an early night last night. So I was very envious when I saw all the amazing videos this morning!.