Old rocket, not meteor, sparked fireball

By Richard Stenger
CNN

(CNN) -- A fireball that raced over the East Coast on Thursday was not a meteor as originally thought but a Russian rocket burning up in the atmosphere after orbiting the Earth for decades, according to the U.S. military.

The fiery object streaked over mid-Atlantic states shortly before dawn, stunning observers who watched the trail of light and smoke.

National Weather Service and Naval Observatory officials at first speculated that it was a meteor. But the U.S. military agency that tracks space debris later identified it as an SL3 rocket booster in orbit since 1975.

The fiery reentry at blazing speeds probably incinerated the vintage rocket. "We believe the object was not designed to survive intact," said Navy Cmdr. Rod Gibbons, a spokesperson for the U.S. Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

The SL3 likely entered the atmosphere at about 6 a.m. EDT, about 100 miles off the coast of Delaware, according to military calculations, Gibbons said.

The space command tracks more than 8,000 artificial objects currently in space, including everything from old rocket parts to satellites to the international space station.

Since tracking began in 1957 with the first manmade satellite, the Russian Sputnik, more than 17,000 objects have reentered the atmosphere.

While the U.S. Space Command does not conjecture where surviving pieces of space debris might land, it can predict when objects in decaying orbits will reenter the atmosphere, within a window of 30 minutes and 6,000 miles, Gibbons said.

"It's still a pretty inexact science. They are traveling at such high speeds."

How fast? When orbiting objects first hit the edge of the atmosphere, they often zoom along at about 17,500 m.p.h.