Here’s the Russian rocket from last night that everyone can’t stop talking about
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-the-russian-rocket-from-last-night-that-everyone-cant-stop-talking-about-2015-12-23?siteid=yhoof2
A fireball shot across the skies above California, Arizona and Nevada on Tuesday night, leaving many on social media wondering what it was all about.
No, it wasn’t Kylo Ren throwing a huge tantrum from a galaxy far, far away.
Turns out, it was a spent Russian rocket plummeting from space.
A Russian SL-4 rocket body re-entered the atmosphere at 7:08 p.m. MST Tuesday night, according to a statement from U.S. Strategic Command. The streak could be seen for about 10 minutes, reports said. Essentially, it’s just space junk falling from the sky.
“Space junk” is actually pretty common, though normally does not produce the bright streak onlookers saw last night. There are more than 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth, according to NASA. Pieces can travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft. There are millions more pieces of debris in space that are too small to track.
Onlookers described it as looking like a meteor shower, a fireball, fireworks or even, yes, an alien invasion.
Here’s what it looked like to earthlings:
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(Pictures and video at the site. Zim.)
Mad Poet Strikes Again.
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