Mysterious East Coast Boom Was Falling Russian Rocket

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090330/sc_space/mysteriouseastcoastboomwasfallingrussianrocket


Andrea Thompson
Senior Writer
SPACE.com andrea Thompson
senior Writer
space.com – Mon Mar 30, 2:52 pm ET
The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.




"I'm pretty convinced that what these folks saw was the second stage of the Soyuz rocket that launched the crew up to the space station," said Jeff Chester of the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.




Residents of the areas around Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Va., began calling 911 last night with reports of hearing a loud boom and seeing a streak of light that lit up the sky, according to news reports.




Chester heard about the incident this morning; the Naval Observatory gets plenty of reports of such fireballs and Chester investigated whether it could be a meteor or whether there were "any potential decays of space junk that were coming up," he told SPACE.com.




He checked the listing for debris that were expected to enter the lower atmosphere from their decaying orbits around this time period and found that second stage of the Soyuz rocket that launched last Thursday was slated to hit during a window that started at 8 p.m. last night.

Isn't it kind of strange that the Russians are allowed to rain down random space junk over America?

that's waaaay out in international waters.

Thousands of others saw it too.

It goes without saying that I don't believe the official explaination because I've seen space junk burning up and what I saw looked nothing like it.

;)

"In an e-mail sent to WTOP, Stefan Bocchino of the USAF Joint Space Operations Center says the "bright light" seen over parts of the East Coast Sunday night was not a result of a man-made space object."

http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=25&sid=1636442