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What NASA says about fireball that streaked across Michigan sky - The Detroit News

What NASA says about fireball that streaked across Michigan sky - The Detroit News

What NASA says about fireball that streaked across Michigan sky - The Detroit News
Oct 21, 2021 57 secs

This event was not caused by a natural object; it was produced by the reentry and fragmentation of a satellite over that area of the country," the agency said in a Facebook post on its NASA Meteor Watch page. .

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, claims the object is a Russian spy satellite, Kosmos-2551, that had a failed launch on Sept.

"We knew that it was going to re-enter sometime in the past 24 hours, a few days ago," said McDowell of the satellite.

When McDowell saw reports Wednesday morning that people in Michigan saw what he described as "clearly space debris," he checked the satellite's orbit and he said it became the obvious conclusion to him.

What distinguishes space debris from objects like fireballs, meteors or space rocks, said McDowell, is the speed at which they travel

He said it is unlikely for an agency like the United States Space Force to confirm that the object was Kosmos-2551, but what usually follows is an update with a particular time and specific latitude or longitude, and to him that would be a solid enough assurance. 

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