A fireball moving slowly across the sky had people in Alberta and Saskatchewan wondering what it was.
It turns out it was a rocket body.
The U.S. Strategic Command told Global News it was an Antares rocket body re-entering the atmosphere and burning up.
“U.S. Strategic Command’s Joint Functional Component Command for Space, through the 18th Space Control Squadron (SPCS) removed an Antares rocket body from the U.S. satellite catalog as a decayed object after it re-entered the atmosphere Nov. 24, 2017, over North America (vicinity Saskatchewan) at approximately 11:48 p.m. CDT,” Maj. Brian Maguire, chief of current operations with U.S. Strategic Command, said in a statement to Global News.
The Antares rocket was launched on Nov. 12 to resupply the International Space Station.
Scientists had predicted it would re-enter the atmosphere around the time that it did.
Maguire said the SPCS tracks “more than 23,000 other on-orbit cataloged objects” which is a key element to “provide space situational awareness for spaceflight safety.”
He added that SPCS cannot accurately track re-entries once initial contact with the atmosphere occurs.
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