Rocket breaks up over Idaho, western states

People from Arizona to Canada have reported seeing bright lights in the sky as a Chinese rocket burned up in the atmosphere late Monday.

Witnesses described the lights as a group of about three dozen fireballs moving slowly from south to north.

Kirk Thurman said he noticed the lights while he was coming out of the Ridley’s in Blackfoot around 10:55 p.m.

“I thought it was a jet at first, then I could see they were ashes or flaming objects behind it,” Thurman said.

Canadian photographer Neil Zeller says it looked like a cluster of fireballs followed by a long orange tail.

A NASA official told the Salt Lake Tribune the lights were a Chinese rocket booster that broke apart about 11 p.m. Mountain Time. Read about Yaogan Weixing-26 here.

Maj. Martin O’Donnell with U.S. Strategic Command says the rocket, which launched a satellite in December, wasn’t abnormally large, but re-entry angles and weather can make things look brighter.

“When something re-enters the atmosphere, the speeds are in many, many thousands of miles per hour, and the friction just due to the air causes intense heat and the object burns up,” said Martin Hackworth, a senior physics lecturer at Idaho State University.

Hackworth said about six tons of material re-enter the Earth each day.

“Not as big as what you saw last night, but you can typically see large objects burning up as they come through the atmosphere most every night,” said Hackworth.

Hackworth said the chances of an object landing on someone are slim.

“Occasionally people have been hit by things that fall from space, but it’s just – the odds are so great against this,” said Hackworth.

Mike Hankey with the American Meteor Society says his organization got more than 150 reports of the event from nine Western states and Canada.

Check out the viewer-submitted photos of the rocket in the slideshow above.