Recent Fireball Seen in Brazil Was Actually Re-Entering Centaur Rocket

By Nancy Atkinson - April 25, 2012 at 11:40 PM UTC | Planetary Science
Sao-de-Francisco.jpg

UPDATE:

After hearing from several experts, this fireball was likely NOT a re-entering rocket body. Bob Christy from

Zarya.info

confirmed that the two videos were reportedly made around 20:00 - 21:00 UTC, and according to SpaceTrack, the Centaur re-entered about 19 hours earlier at 01:23 UTC. Additionally, the re-entry ground track did not cross Brazil at a correlating time. Dr. Marco Langbroek from

SatTrackCam

concurred there is no chance this was a Centaur rocket. "Looking at the videos, to me it looks like a very slow, grazing meteor."

We

recently posted a video

of a huge meteor streaking over the skies of Brazil. It turns out this wasn't your average, ordinary, everyday meteor. It was actually a Centaur rocket body re-entering Earth's atmosphere, according to fellow

NASA Solar System Ambassador Eddie Irizarry.

"An amazing video that shows a fireball lasting more than 30 seconds captured the reentry of a Centaur rocket body that was launched on 1985," said Irizarry in an email, reporting for the

Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe,

the Puerto Rican Astronomy Society. "The object was seen from southeast Brazil by hundreds of people on April 20, 2012 and on the same date,

Intelsat 5A12's rocket body

was about to reenter Earth's atmosphere, passing exactly over the ground track from which some people were able to capture amazing images," reported Irizarry.

There's a second video below, as well as a map of the area the fireball was seen.

Thanks to Eddie for sharing his insight.

More information about the Solar System Ambassador program.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson is a space journalist and author with a passion for telling the stories of people involved in space exploration and astronomy. She is currently retired from daily writing, but worked at Universe Today for 20 years as a writer and editor. She also contributed articles to The Planetary Society, Ad Astra (National Space Society), New Scientist and many other online outlets.

Her 2019 book, "Eight Years to the Moon: The History of the Apollo Missions,” shares the untold stories of engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make the Apollo program so successful, despite the daunting odds against it. Her first book “Incredible Stories From Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos” (2016) tells the stories of 37 scientists and engineers that work on several current NASA robotic missions to explore the solar system and beyond.

Nancy is also a NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador, and through this program, she has the opportunity to share her passion of space and astronomy with children and adults through presentations and programs. Nancy's personal website is nancyatkinson.com