Space Junk.
Dec. 25, 2011
Luminous trail over Europe
The remains of a Russian Soyuz rocket are the source of the trail of light observed during Christmas Eve in a part of the European sky, said Sunday the Royal Observatory of Belgium. She was immediately aroused curiosity and questions, the Soyuz launch failed on Friday 23 December (launch of the Meridian military communications satellite).
"The ball that was observed on December 24 around 17:30 over Belgium, the Netherlands, France and Germany, was the start of the last stage of the Soyuz launcher that comes to transport including the astronaut André Kuipers' to the ISS, International Space Station, said Sunday Observatory of Belgium.
A ball of light, followed by a long trail and not looking like a shooting star, was seen Saturday in the evening in several parts of Germany, in southern Belgium and northern France in particular.
Mystery lifted Sunday.
Soyuz debris over Germany
Videos showing this strange trail moving for about 30 seconds before disappearing were broadcast on the internet and the Center for UFO exploration of Mannheim, in the south-west Germany, was inundated with phone calls. Some experts initially estimated that this could be a meteorite.
The mystery was finally lifted by Sunday Observatory of Belgium for the events related to the failure of a Russian rocket. A Soyuz has indeed taken off Wednesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, to the ISS but suffered a breakdown on board, which prevented the orbit of a satellite communications military and civilian.
Soyuz 2-1b rocket lifts off on Dec. 23, from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northern Russia
"A failure occurred on the third stage of the rocket at the 421st second flight" had acknowledged Friday the Russian Ministry of Defense. The result also observed the luminous trail in European airspace Saturday, a fragment of the satellite fell to Earth Friday, crashing into the roof of a house in Siberia, according to Russian authorities.
Ironically, it crashed on the roof of a house in the street of the Cosmonauts, in a village in Siberia.
This is a sphere of 50cm diameter, police said, who has not said if people were in the building. This fragment belonged to the Soyuz third stage during the launch of the Meridian military communications satellite whose orbit failed aboard the Soyuz on Friday.
This is the fifth failure in 33 launches from the least January.
Text, Images, Video, Credit: ATS / AFP / Orbiter.ch / Translation: Orbiter.ch.
Best regards and Happy Holidays, Orbiter.ch
