Atmospheric Re-entry Friday night
 

A lot of us were talking on 23.45 about what we saw...about 60 seconds of something streaking across the night sky from NW to SE as we were approaching 30W. It broke up into 3, then many pieces. We lost sight of it below the horizon to the SE. Is there any firm information on what it was?

Here's a possible candidate from:

http://www.wingar.demon.co.uk/satevo/dkwatch/

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Object: #27857 = 03- 35 B = Cosmos 2399 Soyuz rocket
Second stage from the Soyuz-U 11A511-U (SL-4) rocket that
orbited the Cosmos 2399 Russian spy satellite on August 12, 2003.
(Diameter : 2.7 m Length : 6.7 m Empty mass : 2400 kg)

Notice prepared: 2003 Aug 15 18:45 UTC

Decay predictions:
Source Prediction made Predicted decay at Latitude Longitude
UTC UTC deg deg

SCC Aug 12 23:32 Aug 13 07:11 +-5h 15.4 N 46.7 W

SatEvo Aug 13 20:35 Aug 16 08:37 +-18h
SatEvo Aug 14 18:45 Aug 16 05:41 +-13h
SatEvo Aug 15 18:45 Aug 16 05:22 +-4h 10.3 N 158.1 E

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Althought the last prediction was for decay over the Pacific, the rocket could have easily continued half a turn over the Atlantic, the last time prediction (0522Z) plus or minus 45 minutes would be in the ball park.

A report that indicates that this rocket did indeed reenter the atmosphere earlier today may be found here:

http://users2.ev1.net/~mmccants/catalogs/satwkrpt.html

Never thought of it before do airline crews get any warnings of stuff re-entering the atmosphere along with volcanic ash reports etc.
Or do you just keep your fingers crossed!

Reminds me of the mysterious piece of magnetic material that reportly entered a BN Islander, photo of said in Pilot mag some years ago.

Here's a later posting to the SeeSat-L list from Alan Pickup that indicates that the Cosmos 2399 rocket probably did reenter over the Atlantic going southbound around 0430Z on August 16. Does this seem about right from the observations on the NAT tracks?

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A summary from my Decay Watch page with the final notices for the
now-decayed Cosmos 2399 rocket:
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Object: #27857 = 03- 35 B = Cosmos 2399 Soyuz rocket

Decay predictions:
Source Prediction made Predicted decay at Latitude Longitude
UTC UTC deg deg
SCC Aug 16 04:30 Aug 16 04:21 +-7m 52.0 N 47.0 W
SatEvo Aug 16 19:10 Aug 16 04:28 +-15m 25.1 N 25.9 W

Final elset:
Cosmos 2399 Soyuz r 151 x 126 km
1 27857U 03035B 03228.10096113 .32145535 79629-5 28263-3 0 289
2 27857 64.9506 198.4310 0019321 58.0056 302.4928 16.50392635 577

Note: The final elset has this 7 sec early against the prediction
I posted yesterday. I estimate that this decayed southbound over
the Atlantic to the W of the Canary Is on the following rev, given
by the predicted elset:
Cosmos 2399 Soyuz r 121 x 110 km
1 27857U 03035B 03228.16135236 1.69660669 50000+2 53543-3 0 90282
2 27857 64.9481 198.1935 0008824 57.9765 302.1092 16.59086692 582


http://satobs.org/seesat/Aug-2003/0165.html

If I am reading this correctly, it indicates atmospheric re-entry at 0421Z at 52N 47W. It continued to a point 25N 26W. That seems about correct, except it looked like it would have been farther east than 26W. I guess I'm off a bit on that.

Thanks for looking that up. I'll post it in ops. There were 3 jets from my carrier, and at least one Speedbird talking about it.