A suspected meteor shower over the skies of Melbourne was actually a Russian rocket re-entering the earth’s atmosphere, the Australian Space Agency says.
There were multiple reports from Victoria and Tasmania of a bright light streaking across the sky leaving a trail of what appeared to be flames.
The object was thought by some people to be a meteor, but the Australian Space Agency said it was most probably man-made.
“The flashes of light seen across Melbourne skies overnight were likely the remnants of a Russian Soyuz-2 rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere,” the agency said in a statement.
“Launch of the Soyuz-2 rocket occurred from Plesetsk Cosmodrome earlier in the evening. According to Russian authorities the launch placed a new generation ‘GLONASS-K2’ global navigation satellite into orbit.”
The space agency said Russian authorities gave notice of the launch and the remnants of the rocket were planned to re-enter the atmosphere into the ocean off the south-east coast of Tasmania.
“The Australian Space Agency will continue to monitor the outcomes of this re-entry with our government partners.”
Astronomer Alan Duffy from Swinburne University told ABC in Australia that the colours produced as the object streaked across the sky suggested it was man-made material.
“So, pieces were coming off this object and in turn they were burning so what this means is that what we are seeing up there is something very large, it’s travelling very fast,” Professor Duffy told ABC Radio Melbourne.
“It’s coming down from orbit some 7 kilometres per second.”