![]() Then, several times each year as Earth makes its journey around the sun, its orbit crosses the orbit of a comet, which means Earth smacks into a bunch of comet debris. This comet debris gets strewn out along the comet's path, especially in the inner solar system (where we live) as the sun's heat boils off more and more ice and debris. Unlike the nearly circular orbits of the planets, the orbits of comets are usually quite lop-sided.Īs a comet gets closer to the sun, some of its icy surface boils off, releasing lots of particles of dust and rock. Why would Earth encounter many meteoroids at once? Well, comets, like Earth and the other planets, also orbit the sun. When Earth encounters many meteoroids at once, we call it a meteor shower. What we see is a "shooting star." That bright streak is not actually the rock, but rather the glowing hot air as the hot rock zips through the atmosphere. As the space rock falls toward Earth, the resistance-or drag-of the air on the rock makes it extremely hot. But then just lying down in your own back yard will put you in the perfect spot to enjoy a great show.Ī meteor is a space rock-or meteoroid-that enters Earth's atmosphere. You might need a warm sleeping bag and an alarm clock to wake you in the middle of the night. spread, and what might re-enter and survive, versus what not, those are the things that are the unknown," he said.If it's time for a meteor shower, you won't need a telescope, binoculars, or a high mountain to have a "star gazing" party. "It's predictable that the thing is going to decay but exactly how and where will the debris. The debris falling from the sky Thursday night was somewhat expected because it had been up for a couple of weeks, slowly decaying in its orbit. Space Command have developed and maintained a catalogue of the anthropogenic space objects and try their best to predict when two of these objects might come close to each other to collide, and warn people. ![]() So whenever they die, they rain down on the space stations, Jah said.īut is it possible to predict these events beforehand? You could just say that these unscheduled events are part of the statistics," he added.Īccording to him, there are currently over 26,000 anthropogenic objects in space, of which about 3,500 are currently serving a purpose while everything else is garbage.Ī lot of the satellites that are put into earth's orbits are orbiting above the earth's space stations. ![]() "The business of conducting space operations, by and large, it's actually quite successful and these things do happen and it's statistical. (Reuters)Įvents like these educate the public on the realities of doing business in space and Jah says it's surprising that equipment doesn't fail more often. ![]() Jah added that there’s no way to really predict where the debris and decaying materials from rockets might re-enter. Given that most of the earth is covered by water and the largest body of that is the Pacific, things that survive reentry, by and large, basically pollute the ocean," he said. "There's so much uncertainty when things hit the atmosphere. Jah said larger objects are more likely to not fully burn up in the atmosphere, especially if the angle of reentry is not steep enough. Moriba Jah, an associate professor in aerospace engineering at the University of Texas at Austin, says the rocket was supposed to "slow itself down in calculated way to force it to re-enter and burn up in the atmosphere."īecause that controlled, scheduled, manoeuvre did not happen, it was left to mother nature to clean it up which is unpredictable. National Weather Service in Seattle has said there is not expected to be any impact on the ground. Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, tweeted that the cause appeared to be the remains of the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket used by SpaceX to launch a satellite earlier this month. Duration 0:57 Featured VideoObservers in B.C., Washington state and Oregon captured what is believed to be the remains of a rocket used by SpaceX.
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