A bright flash was noticed in the sky over southeastern Australia on August 7. Witnesses assumed it was a meteor, but the mysterious space object turned out to be the remains of a Russian rocket returning to Earth after launching a satellite.
The Washington Post writes about it.
"We have determined that flashes of light seen in the Melbourne sky overnight are likely remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering the Earthʼs atmosphere," the Australian Space Agency stated on August 8.
The statement said the Russians had given advance notice of the launch and that the remnants of the missile were expected to enter the atmosphere safely over the ocean off the southeast coast of Tasmania.
Scientists have said that fragments of a rocket over Australia are unlikely to threaten human life, but attention should be paid to the problem of space debris, which is increasingly filling the Earthʼs orbit.
- Unknown debris was found on July 18 on a beach 241 km from the capital of Western Australia, the city of Perth. Twitter users then assumed that this object could be the third stage of the LVM3 rocket, which launched the Indian Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon on July 14.
- On July 31, the Australian Space Agency said that this is a fragment of the spent third stage of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle.