USAF: 'Bright light' not man-made object

Hmm, this may be a story to keep an eye on. You have two military branches appearing to contradict one another---USAF saying not man made, US Navy saying its a russian rocket booster....

WASHINGTON - The flashing lights and booming sounds that were attributed to a piece of orbiting space junk were not the result of a man-made object, according to the United States Air Force.

In an e-mail sent to WTOP, Stefan Bocchino of the USAF Joint Space Operations Center says the "bright light" seen over parts of the East Coast Sunday night was not a result of a man-made space object.

The Joint Space Operations Center tracks more than 19,000 man-made objects in space, but no natural phenomena.

It was first believed that the lights and sounds were caused by space junk related to the Russian rocket Soyuz docking with the International Space Stations Saturday.

Geoff Chester, spokesman for the U.S. Naval Observatory, was nearly sure the object was the rocket's booster tanks for numbers of reasons. Whatever flashed through the sky followed the exact path the space junk was traveling over the eastern seaboard.

Witnesses describe the flashes in the sky as being colored with yellows and oranges. While fireballs usually throw sparks that appear green followed by trains of blue and red. The loud explosion accompanying the balls of fire in the sky also could be explained if the object was a rocket tank with residual amounts of booster fuel.

Full Story:

www.wtopnews.com...

It was probably a meteoritic bolide according to the Space Weather website. Ensure you view the page dated March 31 2009.

Here's an extract:
News reports that a Russian rocket fell over the US mid-Atlantic coast on Sunday evening, March 29th, are probably incorrect. A spent Russian rocket booster did reenter Earth's atmosphere on March 29th, but apparently not over the USA. According to data published by US Strategic Command, the reentry occurred near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) at 11:57 p.m. EDT. So what were those lights in the sky over Maryland and Virginia two hours earlier? Eyewitness accounts of the Atlantic Coast fireball are consistent with a meteoritic bolide--a random asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding in flight.

WG3