Was the Las Vegas Meteor From a Russian Soyuz Rocket?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8xGl-ym7K0

Speculation is running wild right now as to exactly what the mysterious light was that was seen streaking like a fireball over the Las Vegas skies tonight. The fireball was also spotted in Arizona and California. One of the leading theories is that it was the upper stage of a Soyuz Rocket from the International Space Station.

An official with the U.S. Strategic Command has said the light was likely from Russian space debris, although he didn’t elaborate on what type of object could have caused the fireball, NBC News reported.

This has brought more credence to the Soyuz theory. You can read a detailed discussion about the possibility on this Reddit thread. Essentially, a Soyuz rocket launched the Progress MS-01 vehicle to ISS (the International Space Station.) You can see the projected track for the rocket, called SL-4, on Heaven’s Above’s map here. The map shows the upper stage’s path, which would take it directly over California/Arizona, near where the fireball was seen tonight. The stage was projected to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere within the day, according to Aerospace.org.

This is just one theory about the source of the fireball seen over Las Vegas. Others believe it is space junk of another origin or possibly an actual meteor that really did break up after reentering the Earth’s atmosphere. Of course, there are still some people who are fervently hoping it was a UFO of alien origin.

Was the Las Vegas Meteor From a Russian Soyuz Rocket? | Heavy.com

Since we are close to the Geminid meteor shower, I'd hazard a guess that Occam's Razor applies.

Probably something from the Falcon-9 space rocket that just returned to earth.

Santa Claus!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Neverna

Probably something from the Falcon-9 space rocket that just returned to earth.

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That upper stage of the Falcon rocket was deorbited over the South Pacific. SpaceX uses one second stage that is very well controlled. In fact getting this deorbit precisely as planned was an important part of the mission because they will need that precision for future missions soon.

Soyuz uses more than two stages and they are not well controlled. But their trajectory is planned so that they deorbit early so they don't become space debris for a long time. So Soyuz is plausible.

It's the fvcking Millenium Falcon.
Look closely and you can see Chewbacca flicking the bird.