Unexplained Boom and Flash of Light Over Virginia
Tuesday, March 31st, 2009
Calls poured in to 911 dispatchers in Virginia on Sunday describing an unexplained loud boom and a streak of light across the sky. A space.com article published Monday called a Russian rocket falling back to earth the culprit:
The mysterious boom and flash of light seen over parts of Virginia Sunday night was not a meteor, but actually exploding space junk from the second stage of a Russian Soyuz rocket falling back to Earth, according to an official with the U.S. Naval Observatory.
But according to a livescience.com article published today, the Virginia boom couldn’t have been the Russian Rocket:
U.S. Strategic Command has since reported that the rocket re-entered Earth’s atmosphere near Taiwan, on the other side of the world, several hours after the reports of the fireball. So both its timing and entry location rule out the rocket as the explanation for the fireball.
Astronomers now believe that it was a meteor, but with only eye-witness testimony to go on, who knows what it was?