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A blaze of light seen across Utah skies at around 10:55 Monday night was a Chinese rocket body.
The activity in the sky set off a barrage of calls from around the state to police dispatch, the Salt Lake City International Airport, and The Salt Lake Tribune. And the American Meteor Society was investigating more than 300 meteor reports early Tuesday morning, many from Utah.
NASA cleared the air Tuesday morning, confirming what a local expert had earlier told The Tribune.
"What folks in your area saw last night was not a meteor but the re-entry of a Chinese rocket body, which was launched into a 97-degree inclination orbit back on December 27 of last year," said Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center.
NASA/JPL Solar System Ambassador Patrick Wiggins told The Tribune early Tuesday that he was "95 percent sure" that what people saw was the re-entry of a Chinese rocket body used to launch the satellite Yaogan Weixing-26 in December.
Wiggins said he became dubious when people said they watched the flight of a meteor for such an extended period.
"No meteor takes minutes to go across the sky, with very, very rare exception, so that got me thinking satellites," he said.
Wiggins subscribes to a service that alerts him to upcoming re-entries, and sure enough, that was a possible window for the rocket body's return to Earth.
"These happen all the time," he said. "There are literally thousands upon thousands of satellites orbiting the earth right now."
Most re-entries go unnoticed because most of the Earth is relatively unpopulated, he said.
Descriptions of the fireball's color, apparent speed and direction of travel varied from witnesses in Utah up north into Canada. Wiggins said that's likely because the rocket body's lighter materials burn more efficiently upon initial re-entry.