A Russian rocket booster plunged to Earth today, giving early risers from North Carolina to New York a stunning fiery show as it broke into pieces and burned up on re-entry, the U.S. Space Command said.
"We believe it was a Russian SL3 rocket booster that re-entered the Earth's atmosphere at 6 a.m. (local time)," said US Navy Commander Rod Gibbons of the US Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Thousands of people jammed telephone lines to local radio and television stations and emergency hotlines to report the sighting of what they believed was a meteor streaking across the sky.
The calculations that determined the object was a rocket booster were made by the US Space Command's Space Central Center, Commander Gibbons said.
"It was a rocket booster that was attached to a rocket launched in 1975 and it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere today about 100 miles off the coast of Delaware," he said.
He added there was no information available about the rocket the booster would have been attached to or even if the rocket itself was still in orbit.
There are about 8,300 objects orbiting the Earth and some 17,000 objects have been put into space since the former Soviet Union launched Sputnik I on Oct. 4, 1957.
The objects routinely fall back to Earth after years of being in orbit and most of the time go unnoticed.
But with clear blue skies on the East Coast, the object was easily sighted. Also, at that hour many people were leaving for work, Commander Gibbons said.