A cloud of frozen fuel released by a Chinese rocket lit up the Alaskan sky last month and caught everyone’s attention. The material spread over an area larger than the apparent size of the full moon and, when hit by the sun’s rays, shone brighter than the aurora borealis in the background.
At around 5:00 am (local time) on March 29, residents of the city of Fairbanks, Alaska, witnessed a ball of bluish light slowly streaking across the sky.
“It seemed like it had something that was spinning inside it,” resident Leslie Smallwood told local news portal KUAC.
Fortunately, the cameras operated by The Aurora Chaser were armed to record the aurora that was happening that night in near real-time, photographing the sky every 45 seconds. The bluish ball appears in six of these images, suggesting that its journey through the region took at least four minutes.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, said on his Twitter account that the luminous ball corresponded to the trajectory of a Long March 6 rocket launched on March 29. The rocket would have released remnants of fuel that then froze.
China's SAST launched the first Chang Zheng 6A from Taiyuan at 0950 UTC, placing the 天鲲二号 (Tiankun-2) and 浦江二号 (Pujiang-2) satellites in a 588 x 604 km x 97.8 deg sun-synch orbit with 17:00 local time orbital plane.
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 29, 2022
The rocket second stage is in a 558 x 601 km orbit
The cloud of material spread out being illuminated by the Sun.
“This cloud is probably hundreds of miles across; that’s why it looks so big,” McDowell added. Other scientists agreed with the astronomer’s explanation.
McDowell also explained that the ball appeared to be spinning because when the rocket releases the fuel, it goes into a controlled drop to maintain its orbit, rotating as it dumps the rest of the fuel “like a garden hose”.
Image Credit: The Aurora Chasers/Ronn Murray/Marketa Murray
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