A fireball that broke apart in the sky above the Rocky Mountains on Sept. 2 was not a meteor, as witnesses first believed. It was likely a Russian spy satellite.
What was originally described as three “rocks” glowing red and orange as they moved slowly northward across the night sky between New Mexico and Montana was in fact Russia’s Cosmos 2495 reconnaissance satellite, experts told the Associated Press. A meteor would have burned too rapidly and couldn’t have been seen over such a wide swath of the United States, said the American Meteor Society’s operations manager Mike Hankey. The fragments were big enough to be registered as a weather event on radar near Cheyenne.
The Russian Defense Ministry appeared to deny that its satellite had burned up in the atmosphere, with a spokesman saying its military satellites are operating normally. “One can only guess about the condition representatives of the so-called American Meteor Society were in when they identified a luminescent phenomenon high up in the sky as a Russian military satellite,” said the spokesman, Igor Konashenkov.
[AP]
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Why Biden Dropped Out
- Ukraine’s Plan to Survive Trump
- The Rise of a New Kind of Parenting Guru
- The Chaos and Commotion of the RNC in Photos
- Why We All Have a Stake in Twisters’ Success
- 8 Eating Habits That Actually Improve Your Sleep
- Welcome to the Noah Lyles Olympics
- Get Our Paris Olympics Newsletter in Your Inbox
Contact us at letters@time.com