Mysterious streaks of light were seen in the night sky in the Sacramento area of California on Friday. Videos and images of the startling sight were posted to social media by witnesses, including St. Patrick’s Day revelers at the King Kong Brewing Company in Sacramento.
On Instagram, the official King Kong Brewing Company page posted a video of the mysterious sighting. “Crazy fireworks. This flew over the brewery tonight. What do you think?” read the caption of the message.
Watch the video below:
According to The independent, the lights could also be seen as far north as Oregon before they went out. Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained that the lights were actually space debris that burned up as it entered Earth’s atmosphere.
Mr McDowell took to Twitter and said the debris was in fact an ICS-EF, or Inter-orbit Communications System – Exposed Facility, Japanese communications package. It had been used to transmit data between the ISS Kibo module and Mission Control Tsukuba via the Kodama data transfer satellite, he explained.
This is ICS-EF, a Japanese communication package for transmitting data between the ISS Kibo module and Mission Control Tsukuba via the Kodama data relay satellite. It was launched to the ISS on the Space Shuttle in 2009 and had a mass of 310 kg. pic.twitter.com/ygzHdmfQc0
— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) March 18, 2023
Mr. McDowell stated that the equipment was launched on the Space Shuttle to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2009. In 2020, it became a space debris, orbiting Earth for three years before re-entering Earth’s atmosphere over California on Friday night.
According to Mr McDowell, the debris was about 40 miles high, moving at thousands of miles per hour. The flaming wreckage created a “spectacular light show in the sky,” he said.
Individual. the US Space Force also confirmed the reentry path over California for the Inter-Orbit Communication System.