Starlink Satellite Reenters Atmosphere, Seen as ‘Fireball’ Over Romania

Spectacular images were captured by several people on Sunday evening, in the Romanian sky: A “fireball” crossed the sky from northwest to southeast and was seen in Timișoara, Bumbești-Jiu, Craiova or Brașov. According to physicist Claudiu Tănăselia, the “fireball” was actually orbital debris from a Starlink satellite.

“According to the data provided by Space Track (Tracking and Impact Prediction), the object seen this evening over Romania was a non-functional Starlink satellite that re-entered the atmosphere uncontrolled (Starlink-1196, NORAD ID 45103, launched on January 29, 2020)” , said the physicist in a post published on Facebook.

“Orbital debris, observed this evening over Timișoara, at 21:16 (approx.) local time, moving NW to SE. Similar observations have been reported from other cities in Romania (Craiova, Brașov, Bumbești-Jiu), Bulgaria, Serbia, Kosovo”, it is also stated in a post published by the Romanian physicist.

According to Space.com, there were more than 6,281 Starlink satellites in Earth orbit as of July 2024, of which 6,206 were operational at that time. The industrialization of space, brought about by constellations of numerous small and cheap satellites for Internet transmission, such as the Starlink project of Elon Musk’s company SpaceX, is a growing problem for high-precision astronomical observations due to pollution lights that they produce.