BELZONI, Miss.–That wasn’t a comet or a meteorite Saturday night. It was space junk.
Plenty of calls to the National Weather Service reported the object, which streaked like a comet, dragging a bright tail.
It was actually a Chinese communications satellite that was launched in 2016.
The satellite was expected to fall back to the Earth, or at least toward the Earth. It was not expected to reach the ground and the streak was the effect of its burning up in the atmosphere.
It was measured at a speed of 17,000 mph, which is slower than most meteorites.
