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Watch: A Piece of Space Junk Reenters the Atmosphere Over the US

Part of a Chinese rocket is now probably sitting somewhere in Canada.

​ Here's part of a satellite falling out of the sky over the midwest United States.

According to Satview, a website that tracks the orbits of all satellites and many pieces of space junk, a piece of a rocket body used to launch a Chinese satellite was slated to splash down somewhere in the Pacific Ocean last night. Instead, it reentered orbit slightly early, giving large parts of the US quite a show.

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Patrick Wiggins, an amateur astronomer who is a NASA "ambassador," confirmed to Salt Lake City's KSL TV that the object was likely a CZ-4B rocket booster used to put the Yaogan Weixing-26 military recon satellite into orbit.

"It made me feel like I was in an apocalypse movie"

"I was driving home from work that night traveling north, and as I turned to the south to enter my subdivision, I immediately saw the debris breaking up in the southern sky as it was coming north," Ryan Arbon, who recorded the video you see above, told me in an email.

"At first I was afraid of debris coming down nearby, but analyzing what I saw, the breakup traveled much further north than I was," he added. "It was spectacular! I heard nothing, no sonic booms, nothing. However, it made me feel like I was in an apocalypse movie where the sky was ablaze, but in reality, it was not that scary."

The path of the rocket—it was supposed to end up in the Pacific Ocean. Image: SatTrack

In general, satellites and larger pieces of space junk are supposed to reenter the atmosphere above an ocean, usually the Pacific. That doesn't always happen, as you can see here.

But as long as it doesn't clobber anyone in the head—and I haven't seen any reports of that happening—it's better than the junk staying up in orbit, where it could possibly destroy another satellite and create many, many more pieces of fast-moving space bullets. Satview's orbit tracker showed the booster on a trajectory headed toward Canada, where it probably crashed into a bunch of snow.