This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Russia has confirmed a fireball that streaked through the sky above New Zealand on Saturday was one of its early warning satellites burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The satellite’s dramatic descent was captured by TV cameras covering a cricket match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. The match commentator suggested it was a “meteor shower”.

Russia’s Aerospace Forces said the Kosmos 2430 missile early warning satellite, designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches, was guided out of orbit as part of a planned operation on Saturday.

“The satellite burned up completely in the dense atmosphere above the Atlantic Ocean at a height of around 100km,” Aerospace Forces said, adding that its re-entry had been under control at all times. It said the early warning satellite had been non-operational since 2012. The satellite was launched in 2007 as part of Russia’s “Oko” ICBM detection system.

Russia is currently in the process of upgrading the Soviet-era system with more advanced missile-monitoring “Tundra” satellites. The first Tundra satellite was launched into orbit by Russia in 2015.

Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also confirmed that the brightly coloured object, which fragmented as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, was Kosmos 2430.

“It looked like a jet plane at first, and I thought I could see that. But then it broke up into a million pieces – like fireworks,”’ Steve Bloor, who witnessed the event, told the New Zealand Herald.



</s>The spectacular sight was captured on camera by television cameras which were covering an international cricket match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in the town of Mount Maunganui, during which a commentator suggested it may have been a meteor shower. However, Russia’s Aerospace Force Command said the Russian Kosmos-2430 military satellite had been “deorbited” on Saturday morning, after which it burned up over the Atlantic ocean, official news agency TASS reported today. Speaking to the New Zealand Herald, Steve Bloor, who saw the event, said: “It looked like a jet plane at first, and I thought I could see that. 



“But then it broke up into a million pieces – like fireworks.” 



After the initial reports, New Zealand-based physics professor Richard Easther correctly identified “space junk” as a potential cause.



However, he also acknowledged the possibility of it being the result of a natural phenomenon such as a meteor.



He later said it was “a Russian military early warning satellite”, adding that it “would have been over NZ at the right time”.



The Aerospace Force statement said: “The satellite fully burnt up in the dense layers of the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean at an altitude of about 100 km.



“The on-duty teams of the Russian Aerospace Force’s Space Troops controlled the satellite’s deorbiting at all the trajectory sections.



"The space vehicle was launched in 2007 and in 2012 it was excluded from the orbital grouping of the Russian Federation after using up its potential.”



North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) had earlier posted data on the deorbiting of the satellite on its website.

Kosmos-2430 satellite, a part of Russia’s Oko missile attack early warning system, was launched into orbit by the Molniya-M carrier rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in north Russia on October 23, 2007.



Its purpose was to monitor possible launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles from US territory.



Russia is upgrading the Soviet-era system with more advanced missile-monitoring “Tundra” satellites. 



The first of these was launched into orbit by Russia in 2015.



Satellites frequently grab worldwide attention as they crash back down to Earth.



Initial reports suggested the display could have been caused by a meteor shower such as this one

As recently as October 2016, debris from US satellite Flock 2b-2 was visible across much of Southern england and Northern France.



Footage was posted on the Twitter account of the UK Meteor Network, although expert Richard Kacerek said: “We think it’s possibly some kind of space junk because it’s moving far too slowly for a meteor.”



Flock 2b-2 was a tiny commercial Earth observation camera known as a CubeSat, one of 12 launched from the International Space Station in 2015.



Space junk is an increasing concern, with 170 million man-made objects floating in Earth’s upper atmosphere.



Last year it was revealed that The UK Space Agency's RemoveDEBRIS mission had successfully captured debris orbiting the planet at 17,000 mph.</s>A dead Russian missile-warning satellite has fallen out of orbit and burned up in the atmosphere, the Russian Aerospace Forces confirmed on Thursday.

The spacecraft, named Kosmos-2430, was launched in 2007 as part of Russia's Oko program and had monitored the launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles from US territory. According to the military, the satellite has been defunct since 2012. It was pulled out of orbit on 5 January and burned up completely some 100 kilometres above the Atlantic Ocean.

The descent of Kosmos-2430 was seen from New Zealand, where sky-gazers mistook the blazing fireball for a meteor shower.

The North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), which conducts aerospace warning and control, earlier confirmed that it saw the satellite re-enter the atmosphere. This echoed a report by SatTrackCam Leiden, a Dutch-based satellite tacking station, which correctly identified the object seen from New Zealand on 5 January as the aforementioned Russian spacecraft.</s>MOSCOW — The Russian military says one of its early warning satellites has been taken safely out of orbit.

The military’s aerospace forces said in a statement Thursday that the Kosmos 2430 satellite burned in the atmosphere over the Atlantic Ocean during a pre-planned re-entry on Saturday. The statement said aerospace forces controlled the satellite’s descent.

It said the satellite was launched in 2007 as part of the early warning system that monitors for launches of ballistic missiles and the end of its time in service originally was designated as 2012.

Many New Zealanders watched the satellite’s fiery re-entry and cameras at a cricket match captured images of its descent.</s>I don’t like to stray too far into the speculative, but if you ask me, there’s a war currently going on in space that most of us don’t know about. Over the last decade, the world’s superpowers have been jockeying for position in the race to achieve space superiority. All sorts of secret satellite-based weapons or weaponized satellites have been put into position, setting the board for what will surely be a weird orbital chess match that could see fiery wreckage rain down on the unsuspecting planet below.

Whether or not that will happen anytime soon is anyone’s guess. One thing is sure though: there’s a lot of weird stuff happening in space. Secretive satellite launches, strange lights in the sky, and reports of spacecraft in orbit behaving strangely. On top of that, the President of the United States has declared the creation of a Space Force, and China is building bases on the dark side of the moon. Maybe it’s time to re-watch Moonraker for some tips on zero-gravity gun fighting.

The latest clue that a war is brewing in space comes from New Zealand, where thousands of residents witnessed a strange sight on in the sky on January 5th. A fiery object streaked across the sky for nearly half a minute, breaking apart as it burned. Videos of the object were posted to social media and picked up by local news outlets. Some skywatchers speculated the object was a a meteorite, while others of course thought it was aliens. It’s always maybe aliens.

It turns out, the fireball could very well have been a Russian satellite of some kind. Richard Easther, physics chair at the University of Auckland, says he is “99 percent certain” the object was a Russian Kosmos 2430 satellite which was sent into orbit to protect against missile attacks from the United States. If that’s the case, what made it fall down? You guessed it, say it with me now: SPACE FORCE! SPACE FORCE! SPACE FORCE!

Maybe. Of course, the satellite could have reentered and burned up accidentally due to mechanical failure, user error, or who knows what else. It is the Russian space program, after all. With so many experimental weapons and secret satellites being launched, though, there’s no telling what could have brought this satellite down – if it was indeed a satellite. What exactly was seen in the skies over New Zealand?</s>Russia’s Aerospace Forces has confirmed that a bright object spotted in the sky over the weekend was a missile defense satellite launched 12 years ago.

Videos on social media published this weekend appeared to show a bright object streaking through the sky over New Zealand.

“Sweet meteor shower over Gisborne just now,” a Twitter user based in New Zealand tweeted Saturday.
Russia confirms that a fireball seen over much of New Zealand on January 5 was its Kosmos 2430 missile early warning satellite, which was launched in 2007.