Mysterious Fireball Spotted Over The Rockies Was A Russian Spy Satellite, Experts Say
The Object that Looked Like a Fireball was Seen Bursting in the Sky
Earlier this month, a mysterious object emitting a bright light was spotted above the Rocky Mountains. The circular object was seen moving across the mountains and it suddenly burst up above. The object was seen at around 10:30 pm MDT on Sept. 2 over Colorado and Wyoming. There were reports of the object from as far as New Mexico, South Dakota and Montana. Observers were taken aback by what they saw and several speculations about the mysterious object began to surface in media.
People who saw it thought that they looked like glowing rocks, and so observers concluded that the object could in fact be a meteorite or some celestial body, the Huffington Post reported. Experts, however, confirm that the spotted object was not a celestial body. According to the American Meteor Society, if the object was a meteorite, it would not have been seen burning up in the sky as it would have happened too quickly.
Mike Hankey, the American Meteor Society's operations manager, said that the fragments from the object that had deteriorated were very huge. They were even big enough to show up as a weather event on radar just east of Cheyenne, he said.
Amidst several speculations the military experts confirm that the mysterious object was a Russian spy satellite. Charles Vick, an aerospace analyst with the military information Web site Globalsecurity.org, told the Associated Press that it was fragments of the Russia's Cosmos 2495 reconnaissance satellite that was launched in May.
John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org, told CBC news that the satellite was spying on "Deployed hardware, airplanes, ships, tanks, factories and new intelligence facilities."
According to Huffington Post, the satellite was launched in May. It reported that Cosmos 2495 was a photoreconnaissance satellite that was built to take high-resolution images of ground targets. The U.S. Strategic Command, a branch of the Department of Defense, further confirmed that the satellite had re-entered Earth's atmosphere. It stated that in September, the satellite was removed from their catalog of orbiting satellites.
Though several experts point that the object was a Russian satellite, the Russian Defense Ministry has denied it. It states that it has no connection with the object that was spotted. Igor Konashenkov, ministry spokesman, said that all have their satellites have been operating normally.
"One can only guess what condition the representatives of the so-called American Meteor Society must be in to have identified a fireball at that high altitude as a Russian military satellite," Konashenkov told RIA Novosti.
The Associated Press reported that there are nearly 98 spy satellites in the orbit, and 40 of them are said to belong to the U.S., while three are from Russia.
