A fireball that streaked across the sky on Tuesday night, 2 Sept., was likely a defunct prototype space station falling to Earth, the local astronomical society reports.
Residents and visitors in Grand Cayman and Cayman Brac, as well as in Jamaica, flocked to social media to post videos and accounts of a bright object with a long reddish tail streaking across the sky around 7:45pm.
Many of those who witnessed the object surmised that it was likely a large meteor or space debris.
Tiyen Miller, of the Cayman Islands Astronomical Society, after carrying out some quick detective work of online astronomy charts following reports of the sightings, determined that the object was most likely the Genesis II, an experimental unmanned space station that was launched in 2007.
Miller said he was able to identify what the mysterious object in the sky was, by using charts estimating re-entry times and locations from Aerospace.org and other sources.
“It was quite satisfying to check all the published charts and identity it,” he said. “It’s basically a prototype module launched by a private company 18 years ago.”
The Genesis II was designed and built by an American firm called Bigelow Aerospace, and was launched into space on 28 June 2007 from the Kosmotras Space and Missile Complex in Yasny, Russia. It was the second module sent into orbit by the company.
The craft measured about 15 feet in length and 6.2 feet in diameter at launch, expanding to 8 feet in diameter after expansion in orbit. Its avionics system was designed to work for six months, but it continued to operate for more than two and a half years before it failed, and has been orbiting the planet as space debris ever since.
According to the Bigelow Aerospace website, members of the public, for the sum of US$295, could ship small items to the company to be included in the space station. It received “all kinds of items, from ashes to pictures to business cards”, and photographed all the items on board the craft for its customers.
Related Videos
