Rocket Re-Entry Over Southern Australia

I wrote about sighting of a fireball over Sweden as possibly being the Molniya-M Stage 3 that was set to make an entry sometime later in the day last Saturday. The Russian rocket motor actually entered the atmosphere off of the coast of southern Australia, on the opposite end of the world. Since this was an uncontrolled re-entry this is no real surprise that the location and timing of the re-entry was so far off from the predictions. In addition, from what I read in their reports, it was traveling in the opposite direction of the old Russian rocket.

So, it is unlikely that the witnesses in Sweden were looking at a rocket motor, but most likely just a regular old meteor burning up.

The word Molniya means "lightning" in Russian. These rocket motors have been in service since the 1960s. The one that burned up over southern Australia was launched back in 1982. That's quite a long time that it spent floating around in space before it came down!