Re-entry of 15001D / 40373 seen from Russia

From: Ted Molczan via Seesat-l <seesat-l_at_satobs.org>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2015 09:30:24 -0500
It appears that the re-entry of 15001D / 40373 was seen from Russia's far east Amur Region on Jan 17 21:48 UTC (Jan 18
near 06:48 local time).

The first USSTRATCOM TIP message was issued a couple of hours before re-entry. The second and probably final one was
issued a couple of hours after re-entry. It reported the time of decay as 2015 Jan 17 21:46 UTC +/- 7 min., and the
location as 52 deg N, 121 deg E.

USSTRATCOM identifies 15001D / 40373 as debris of Dragon CRS-5, launched on Jan 10; however, I believe it was its
Falcon 9 second stage. The Dragon spacecraft jettisons two solar array covers upon reaching orbit, which typically
decay within 2 or 3 days of launch. The Falcon stage typically re-enters about a week later. The respective decay dates
of objects 15001B / 40371 and 15001C / 40372 were 2015 Jan 13 and Jan 12, consistent with the solar array covers, but
USSTRATCOM identified B as the Falcon 9 second stage. The identities of 15001B / 40371 and 15001D / 40373 should be
swapped.

I have seen reports of sightings from the following locations:

Blagoveshchensk  50.28 N, 127.54 E
Belogorsk        50.92 N, 128.47 E
Khabarovsk Krai  48.50 N, 135.07 E  45 s duration

So far, I have found the following sources of information on the sightings.

Astroforum: http://vk.com/astro.nomy?w=wall-727032_52634

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV12M3xZopA

RT has a report: http://rt.com/news/223771-russia-meteorite-far-east/

Ted Molczan


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Received on Sun Jan 18 2015 - 08:30:58 UTC

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