A mass of fireballs streaked the southern sky Saturday night, dazzling and alarming witnesses, especially in light of mysterious drone sightings across New Jersey and the Northeast.
But this time the truth came out.
Experts claim the spectacular light show was the result of a derelict Chinese satellite crashing into Earth's atmosphere.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, posted on He said he was burnt out.
A cellphone video shared by a gob-covered earthling showed what appeared to be a giant shooting star breaking into chunks of small fireballs as the satellite disintegrated.
“I saw a meteorite fall to Earth in Mobile Alabama. It was huge and the trajectory was amazing,” posted one user on X.
Another wrote: “Convinced myself someone was putting up weird Christmas lights up on the hill.”
McDowell said the satellite was used for image processing by the Beijing-based company Spaceview.
Not everyone buys the “harmless space junk” story.
“Chinese satellites and Chinese drones flying over the American mainland. So what can go wrong?” another wrote.
Space debris falling to Earth is extremely common, with 200 to 400 objects re-entering the atmosphere each year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Most of these disintegrate completely long before they reach the ground, and most of the pieces that remain intact sink into the ocean.
According to NOAA, there are about 30,000 pieces of space junk floating around that are larger than a softball, and about 1,000 of them are the size of a spacecraft.
NASA monitors space debris with a space surveillance network that combines space and ground-based instruments.
