This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Russia has confirmed a fireball that streaked through the sky above New Zealand on Saturday was one of its early warning satellites burning up as it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere.

The satellite’s dramatic descent was captured by TV cameras covering a cricket match between New Zealand and Sri Lanka in Mount Maunganui, New Zealand. The match commentator suggested it was a “meteor shower”.

Russia’s Aerospace Forces said the Kosmos 2430 missile early warning satellite, designed to detect intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launches, was guided out of orbit as part of a planned operation on Saturday.

“The satellite burned up completely in the dense atmosphere above the Atlantic Ocean at a height of around 100km,” Aerospace Forces said, adding that its re-entry had been under control at all times. It said the early warning satellite had been non-operational since 2012. The satellite was launched in 2007 as part of Russia’s “Oko” ICBM detection system.

Russia is currently in the process of upgrading the Soviet-era system with more advanced missile-monitoring “Tundra” satellites. The first Tundra satellite was launched into orbit by Russia in 2015.

Norad, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, also confirmed that the brightly coloured object, which fragmented as it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere, was Kosmos 2430.

“It looked like a jet plane at first, and I thought I could see that. But then it broke up into a million pieces – like fireworks,”’ Steve Bloor, who witnessed the event, told the New Zealand Herald.



