The mysterious “fireball” in Australia: what is this phenomenon that lit up the sky of Melbourne in the middle of the night?

An unidentified vehicle resembling a fireball was seen in the sky over Melbourne (Australia) from Monday, August 7 to Tuesday, August 8. On Tuesday, the Australian Space Agency confirmed that it was the result of the third stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket.

Exceptional photos were taken. An initially unidentified aircraft resembling a fireball was seen in the sky over Melbourne in the state of Victoria (Australia), on the night of Monday, August 7 to Tuesday, August 8.

The Australian Space Agency later confirmed that this was the aftermath of the third stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket, which was launched Monday evening at 9:20 pm from the Plesetsk cosmodrome in northwest Russia.

The rocket, whose third stage entered the Earth’s atmosphere in the ocean off the southeastern coast of Tasmania at midnight (Melbourne time), launched a GLONASS-K2 navigation satellite.

7 News Australia reported that the fallout from the missile’s third stage generated “a fireball and a boom that shook homes across Victoria”.

Michael Brown, assistant professor at the school, added: “Reentries are sometimes confused with space junk and meteorites, which are also spectacular but are usually much shorter, as they hit the atmosphere much faster.” Monash University in Melbourne, in a press release carried by the specialized site space.com.