Spectacular phenomenon observed in the sky last night in Romania; a „fireball” crossed the sky from northwest to southeast. According to physicist Claudiu Tănăselia, the object was not a meteorite, but an orbital debris from a Starlink satellite.
„According to the data provided by Space Track (Tracking and Impact Prediction), the object seen tonight above Romania was a non-functional Starlink satellite, which re-entered the atmosphere uncontrolled (Starlink-1196, NORAD ID 45103, launched on January 29, 2020),” he wrote on Facebook.
„Orbital debris, observed tonight above Timișoara, at local time 9:16 PM (approx.), moving in the NW to SE direction. Similar observations have been reported from other cities in Romania (Craiova, Brașov, Timișoara, Bumbești-Jiu), Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo,” Claudiu Tănăselia wrote in another post.
Several video recordings have surfaced on social media from areas where the object was sighted.
Space debris, defined by the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) as artificial objects orbiting Earth that are non-functional, has become a worrying issue in recent years.
In 2022, the commission adopted a regulation requiring satellite operators to remove them from orbit within a maximum of five years after the end of the mission.
After nearly 60 years of space activity and over 5,500 space launches, approximately 23,000 objects with diameters larger than 10 centimeters orbit Earth, adrift, forming a "cloud" of debris: former rockets, satellite fragments remaining in orbit after various explosions, whole satellites reaching the end of their operational cycles.