A Giant Fireball Lights Up the Sky Over Australia: Falling Russian Rocket Causes Sonic Boom

Intan Rakhmayanti Dewi, CNBC Indonesia

Tech

Friday, 11/08/2023 07:10 WIB

Photo: PeachTeaGame/Twitter

Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – A giant fireball crossed the sky over Australia on Monday (7/8) evening, local time. The fireball was followed by a sonic boom that rocked homes in Victoria, the southern state of Australia.

The fireball shocked local residents. However, after being traced, this object is the body of a Russian rocket, Soyuz, which fell back to Earth.

“The falling rocket generated a fireball and sonic boom that rocked homes across Victoria,” 7 News Australia said via X (formerly Twitter), quoted from Space, Thursday (10/8/2023).

This chunk of space junk hasn’t been there long. It was the third stage of the Soyuz rocket that launched the Glonass navigation satellite on the same day, according to astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.

The mission lifted off at 9:20 a.m. EDT on Monday from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in northwestern Russia and blasted into space on a southeastern path.

The Soyuz third stage finally entered Earth’s atmosphere southeast of Tasmania, over the open ocean, around 10 a.m. EDT (1400 GMT; midnight Melbourne time), McDowell said.

The body of the rocket that crashed was not the very top of the Soyuz, which is known as a frigate. So, the rocket continues to carry the Glonass satellite to its intended orbit.

The Soyuz rocket hit the atmosphere at several kilometers per second, said Michael Brown, associate professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University in Melbourne.

“Re-entry of space junk is sometimes confused with meteors, which are also spectacular but usually a much shorter event, as they hit the atmosphere at a much faster rate,” Brown said in an emailed statement about the event.

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