A social media user captured a video of the event, taken while he was outside his Prairieville home with friends.
Observers across social media continued to report sightings as the fireball streaked northward, illuminating the skies over Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri.
Jonathan McDowell, a Harvard astronomer and satellite tracker, saw the posts and identified the event as a space debris re-entry.
Checking the US Space Force’s tracking data for possible candidates, he found a match with the Gaojing 1-02 orbit.
The satellite, which was decommissioned two years ago, had no active manoeuvring capability and it was not possible to target a specific landing location, McDowell said.
According to them, a massive fireball that was observed piercing the atmosphere over Louisiana on Saturday at around 10 p.m. local time was most likely the remnants of a high-resolution commercial imaging satellite called the Gaojing SuperView 1-02.
As he and his friends were outside his Prairieville home, a social media user recorded the incident. What’s that? Whoa. It was true. occurred just now at 22:08 CST in Louisiana. The meteor shower,” he wrote.
“It was insane. Later, he added, “The fire caught us off guard.”. As the fireball flashed northward, lighting up the skies over Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri, onlookers on social media kept reporting sightings.
When Harvard astronomer and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell noticed the posts, he determined that the event was a re-entry of space debris. He looked through the tracking data of the US Space Force to find potential candidates, and the Gaojing 1-02 orbit matched.
From late 2016 to early 2023, Gaojing 1-02, which weighed 560 kg (1,234 point 5 pounds), operated at an altitude of 530 km (329 miles) and took high-resolution pictures for resource surveys, environmental monitoring, and mapping in China.
“There was no active maneuvering capability and no way to target a specific landing location,” McDowell said of the decommissioned satellite. Since it re-entered, there have been no reports of debris recovery.
