Fireball Seen Over Australian Skies Turns Out To Be Space Debris From Russian Rocket!

"The darksome atmosphere is as a prison to the demons until the judgment day. They carry fire of hell with them wherever they go. The devils besought the Lord not to cast them into the abyss; for they asked for this, deeming it to be a punishment for them to be cast out of a place where they could injure men. Hence it is stated,They besought Him that He would not expel them out of the country." St Thomas Aquinas

“The demons of the air together with the Antichrist will perform great wonders on earth and in the atmosphere, and men will become more and more perverted. Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879)

For the time has come when the most astonishing wonders will take place on the earth and in the air.Our Lady of La Salette 19 Sept. 1846 (Published by Mélanie 1879)

Fireball seen over Australian skies was space debris from Russian rocket

(SMH)The fireball that streaked across the skies of south-eastern Australia on Thursday night was an ejected piece of a Russian rocket used to launch a weather satellite, a leading astronomer says.

NASA issued an alert on Thursday saying a seven-metre, three-tonne, cylindrical object would plunge to Earth over Victoria and Tasmania, said Professor Brian Schmidt, an astronomer at the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University.

“Orbits of these [pieces of space junk] is monitored quite closely," he said. "This one was decaying rapidly and the prediction of the path was confirmed, because everyone saw it."

The object was the "third-stage" of the Soyuz rocket used on July 8 to launch Russia’s second Meteor-M weather satellite, quashing beliefs it was a meteorite.

One resident Cobar, in western NSW, reported hearing a sonic boom after a five minute delay, which indicated the object disintegrated within 100 kilometres of the town, said Professor Schmidt.

But Dr Nick Lomb, curator of astronomy at Sydney Observatory, said the "main part" of the bright object most likely plunged into the ocean near Brisbane.

Dr Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said data from the Space-Track organisation showed the rocket part re-entered over a track from southern NSW to southern Queensland.

"Break-up is over NSW [near] Canberra but subset of densest debris, if any survives, might have made it to south Queensland," he said.

Dr McDowell had tweeted that the object was: "Object 40077, 3rd stage from Meteor-M launch, reentered over Australia at about 1145 UTC Jul 10".

The fireball has been described as a "massive shooting star" by witnesses in Melbourne and Sydney. It was also spotted by residents in Tasmania and South Australia.