Janice R. Andrews
A dramatic scene unfolded Sunday night when fiery streaks illuminated the sky as a Chinese satellite, SuperView-1 02, burned up upon reentering Earth’s atmosphere. The spectacular display occurred around 10 p.m. over Bryant, Arkansas, as the satellite disintegrated, leaving behind a trail of orange light.
Thousands of people across the southeastern U.S. were stunned as they saw the fiery trail, initially believing it was a meteor shower. Reagan Jones, a local resident, recorded the event and shared the footage on social media. However, scientists quickly clarified that the phenomenon was not caused by a meteor, but by the satellite’s uncontrolled reentry into the atmosphere.
Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, confirmed on X (formerly Twitter) that the event was the result of the SuperView-1 02 satellite burning up. The satellite had been inactive since January 2023 and was classified as space junk.
“This satellite has been space junk and was inactive since January 2023,” McDowell stated. “The reentry was uncontrolled. We knew it was coming down, but only had a +2-hour accuracy estimate, so the exact time and location weren’t predictable.”
Following the event, the American Meteor Society received over 120 reports of sightings from Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, and Missouri. McDowell confirmed the satellite reentered the atmosphere above New Orleans at 10:08 p.m. local time and traveled north, passing over Arkansas and Missouri, where many residents witnessed the phenomenon.
Meteorologist Nathan Scott from a CBS affiliate in Little Rock, Arkansas, supported McDowell’s explanation, emphasizing that the slow-moving light show couldn’t have been a meteor. “Meteors only last a few seconds,” Scott wrote, confirming the satellite’s reentry.
Launched in 2016 from Taiyuan, China, the SuperView-1 02 was part of a four-satellite constellation operated by Beijing’s Siwei Star Co. Ltd. The satellites orbited at an altitude of 500 km, and the SuperView-1 02 had been slowly descending since it was deactivated.
Weighing around half a ton, the satellite was small enough to almost entirely burn up during reentry, although McDowell speculated that denser components, such as parts of the propulsion system, might have survived.
This uncontrolled reentry underscores the increasing concern over space debris, as more aging satellites face fiery returns to Earth. For many across the southeastern U.S., though, the sight was a mesmerizing cosmic event, offering a rare glimpse of a satellite’s fiery descent through the sky.
As experts continue to monitor such incidents, the reentry of SuperView-1 02 serves as a reminder of the challenges posed by space junk and the impact of human activity in space.
