See a dead Chinese satellite burn up as a brilliant fireball in the night sky (video)

A brilliant fireball lit up the night sky over some southern states in the United States this weekend, but that was no meteor. It was Chinese space junk.

The fireball, which streaked over parts of Missisippi, Arkansa and Missouri on Saturday night (Dec. 21), was the death knell of a defunct Chinese commercial Earth imaging satellite called Superview 1-02 (or GaoJing 1-02) as it burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. Video of the Chinese space junk burning up shows it as several streaks of objects flaring up in the night sky.

“The commercial imaging satellite 高景一号02星 (GaoJing 1-02, Superview 1-02), operated by Beijing-based SpaceView (北京航天世景信息技术有限公司) reentered above New Orleans at 0408 UTC Dec 22 (1008 pm CST Dec 21) heading northbound towards MS, AR, MO and was widely observed,” wrote Jonathan McDowell, an astrosphycist at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics who tracks satellite launches and reentries, in a post on X. He also shared the apparent track of the space debris.

A piece of Chinese satellite space junk breaks apart in the night sky as a fireball

A piece of Chinese satellite space junk breaks apart in the night sky as a fireball in this video still image captured by Luke Matheson in Rison, Arkansas on Dec. 21, 2024. (Image credit: Luke Matheson)

The commercial imaging satellite 高景一号02星 (GaoJing 1-02, Superview 1-02), operated by Beijing-based SpaceView (北京航天世景信息技术有限公司) reentered above New Orleans at 0408 UTC Dec 22 (10.08 pm CST Dec 21) heading northbound towards MS, AR, MO and was widely observed pic.twitter.com/GqbwpsAdb8December 22, 2024

The fireball was visible to stargazers across at least 12 states across the southern U.S., with the American Meteor Society receiving at least 120 reports from Texas to Florida, and as far north as Indiana and Illinois.

Christopher Rainer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Jackson, Mississippi, told Channel 3 WLBT news that his agency received some reports of the fireball after 10 p.m. local time on Dec. 21. At the time, NWS officials believed it was a meteor breaking apart in the upper atmosphere that posed no danger to people on the ground, WLBT reported.

The Superview 1-02 satellite was one of two Superview 1 satellites launched into orbit in December 2016 for SpaceView by a Chinese Long March 2D rocket. (The other satellite was, perhaps unsurprisingly, called Superview 1-01.) The launch was not without its hiccups.

Instead of deploying the two satellites into a circular orbit about 330 miles (530 kilometers) above Earth, the satellites were placed into elliptical (or oval-shaped) orbits that ranked from 133 miles to 326 miles (214-524 km) above Earth, according to tracking data from the U.S. Air Force Joint Space Operations Center. Over time, the two satellites were able to gradually raise their orbits to begin their mission.

The SuperView 1 satellites were China’s first-ever commercial high-resolution Earth observations satellites. Each weighed about 1,235 pounds (560 kilograms) and carried cameras with a resolution of about 0.5 per pixel.

SpaceView launched a series of additional SuperView satellites in subsequent years to build up an Earth-imaging constellation of spacecraft.

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Tariq is the Editor-in-Chief of Space.com and joined the team in 2001, first as an intern and staff writer, and later as an editor. He covers human spaceflight, exploration and space science, as well as skywatching and entertainment. He became Space.com’s Managing Editor in 2009 and Editor-in-Chief in 2019. Before joining Space.com, Tariq was a staff reporter for The Los Angeles Times covering education and city beats in La Habra, Fullerton and Huntington Beach. In October 2022, Tariq received the Harry Kolcum Award for excellence in space reporting from the National Space Club Florida Committee. He is also an Eagle Scout (yes, he has the Space Exploration merit badge) and went to Space Camp four times as a kid and a fifth time as an adult. He has journalism degrees from the University of Southern California and New York University. You can find Tariq at Space.com and as the co-host to the This Week In Space podcast with space historian Rod Pyle on the TWiT network. To see his latest project, you can follow Tariq on Twitter @tariqjmalik.

Manas Ranjan Sahoo
Manas Ranjan Sahoo

I’m Manas Ranjan Sahoo: Founder of “Webtirety Software”. I’m a Full-time Software Professional and an aspiring entrepreneur, dedicated to growing this platform as large as possible. I love to Write Blogs on Software, Mobile applications, Web Technology, eCommerce, SEO, and about My experience with Life.

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