What was this strange fireball that lit up the Melbourne sky at midnight?

Is it a plane? Is it a bird? Is that so? A meteor ? A strange celestial object has lit up the sky Melbourne (Australia) Monday to Tuesday night, midnight. The sighting has raised many questions and hypotheses about its origin, reports said HuffPost.

At midnight, a ball of fire appeared in the darkness above Victoria’s capital. The unidentified object, following a long orange trail, was filmed by several impressed – and a little worried – witnesses. The videos posted on social media have been viewed lakhs of times.

The remains of a Russian rocket

Some Melbourne residents felt a jolt, and an explosion rang out across the state. It is reminiscent of a sonic boom, the sudden noise that occurs when an object breaks the sound barrier HuffPost. Some immediately thought it was a meteor or a Asteroid.

But the orange path is a symbol of a human and very earthly object, made of metal or plastic in flames. On Twitter, American astronomer Jonathan McDowell speculated that it could be in part Rocket The rocket was sent into space a few days ago and its debris is expected to fall back into the atmosphere later that day.

The Australian space agency confirmed it was debris from the Soyuz-2 rocket, which was launched on August 7 by Russian company Roscosmos with the GLONASS-K2 navigation satellite. After placing the satellite in orbit, the rocket was expected to re-enter the atmosphere and fall into the ocean off Tasmania, not far from Melbourne.

20 minutes with the agency