Foreign Affairs

Objects from Space

UFOs in the skies of California: mysterious streaks of light are filmed by residents

An astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said he was 99.9% sure he had an explanation

19/03/2023

Mysterious streaks of light were spotted Friday night in the skies of California, in the Sacramento area, leaving incredulous some people celebrating San Patrick's day, and who then posted the video of the spectacular event on social media.

Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said he was 99.9% sure he had an explanation: it was space debris that burned up and disintegrated when it re-entered the atmosphere. Wreckage of an old Japanese interorbital communication system, used to transmit information from the International Space Station to another satellite, which in turn turned it back on Earth. The system became obsolete with the decommissioning of the satellite in 2017, and was ejected from the ISS in 2020 to free up space.

The U.S. Space Force has confirmed the route back to California, and the time is compatible with when people attended the event. The burning wreckage of this 310kg object created a "light show in the sky," McDowell said, burning at about 60 kilometers as they traveled at thousands of miles per hour. Likewise, doubt remains in some.