It looked like an orange basketball slowly falling out of the sky. It finally burned out leaving the sky a reddish-orange color.
2006-12-26 13:20:07 · 6 answers · asked by small1 1 in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
On 12/22 which is during the week of 12/18, the American space shuttle Discovery reentered the Earth's atmosphere and landed at the Kennedy Space Center.
I have seen the re-entry trail a few times. It looks exactly as you described.
2006-12-27 04:26:10 · answer #1 · answered by Otis F 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
Probably a meteorite - they occur many times throughout the night. If it shot across the sky, it was a meteorite. If it stayed in one place, getting very bright and then dimming quickly, it might have been a iridium flash - sunlight bouncing off solar panels of satellites in orbit (yes, they occur at night).
2006-12-26 21:24:18 · answer #2 · answered by eri 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
http://www.physorg.com/news85834569.html
. . .the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) had launched a H-IIA rocket carrying the KIKU No. 8 (ETS-VIII) engineering test satellite, one of the largest geostationary satellites in the world.
. . .
. . .The object was most probably the 2nd stage of the launcher and the cloudy appearance at the end of the sequence most likely a dump of liquid fuel, made to avoid the explosion of the rocket in hundreds of scattered pieces, as a result of leftover fuel inside spent rocket stages. . .
more on the sat
http://www.jaxa.jp/missions/projects/sat/tsushin/ets8/index_e.html
2006-12-26 23:00:28 · answer #3 · answered by rob u 5 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Aliens.
2006-12-26 22:48:17 · answer #4 · answered by Carson 3 · 0⤊ 2⤋
i just found an article about it for science and it was mercury. i swear to god. it will be back in 2016
2006-12-26 21:29:31 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 3⤋
it was a meteorite.
2006-12-26 22:55:32 · answer #6 · answered by loanshark50 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋