US Air Force : Virginia UFO was NOT Man-made space object March 31, 2009

According to the United States Air Force, The flashing lights and booming sounds that were attributed to a piece of orbiting space junk were not the result of a man-made object.

Source



Update : Ball of light over Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina ,USA

what do you guys think about it ?

reply to post by Virginia_UFO


I'm in TN and I wish I had have seen it so I could get an idea or form a real opinion. I believe it was probably a meteor, but I don't know if meteors make a sound like was described.

reply to post by Virginia_UFO


Did you READ the entire 'source'??? Look at paragraph 5, the one witht he Name 'Chester' as the first word....it completely contradicts the first paragraph!!!

People....people are the WORST eyewitnesses possible.

This entire thing was covered in the Washington Post today, 31 March, 2009 in the Metro section.

The US Shuttle Discovery un-docked from the ISS, and a Russian Soyeuz capsule docked with some Cosmonauts.

One of the booster stages from Soyeuz re-entered the atmosphere, as expected, and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean. It had a problem, though....the guidance was off, that is, the Ground-Based Guidance was off-line due to battery failure. In a perfect scenario, it would have de-orbited farther out to sea.

As it is, it was observed along the US Eastern Seaboard, because of it's proximity of just a few hundred miles offshore.

Sounds of the explosions of latent fuel in the booster's tanks, and also the sonic booms of hte mass as it exceeded the sound barrier ... because there was a substantial mass left over from the heat of re-entry.

personally, I think this was a miscalculation on the part of the Russian Space Agency....it could have been horrific if it had hit land....

Seems like an awful lot of "Space Junk" coming down recently. I know there is more technology to be informed with and more technology in space that can crash or be "Off-Target", but are we beginning to see what is going to be an increasing trend.

It is so hard to believe the medias explanation for anything anymore for me, especially when the explanation has to do with outer-space.

reply to post by esteay812


esteay....technically, 'outer space' would best be defined as well beyond the Earth-Moon System.

Most of the 'space-junk' that we are concerned with is in LEO. or 'low earth orbit'....just a few hundred miles up. NORAD tracks 25,000+ objects in this realm.

'Outer Space' is a subjective term, I suppose....to me, it means 'Interstellar Space'. But, that's just me.

To be clear on terms....'inTRAstellar' means within a star's planetary system. SO, in our case, it would entail all space out as far as Neptune's orbit....but, that limits us to two-dimensional thinking. We must imagine a 'sphere' that is the radius of Neptune's orbit, roughly....to encompass what we call 'our' Solar System....except, complication....the Oort Cloud...many, many more AUs out....it's going to need a consensus to determine the actual boundaries, some day in the future.

But....that hyperbole is best left to another topic...

The fact remains: Certain objects in LEO will decay, and re-enter....depending on a vast number of variables, and may not be completely predictable every time.

Factors affecting various trends: The recent Russian booster stage....was never meant to enter a stable orbit....its re-entry trajectory was a concern, as noted by the calls to 911 after the fact.

Just last week, a piece of debris being tracked posed a threat to the ISS....because it was going to possibly be within a few miles, but again, to erron the side of safety....since Discovery was docked to ISS, it used thrusters to slowly maneuver the belly of the Shuttle to provide just a very small delta-v....via atmospheric friction....to increase the safety range of the 4-inch object that was being tracked.

Again, this was a short-lived event....since, if you have any understanding of how things work while on orbit, you would know that the orientation of the object has NOTHING to do with the surface of the Earth.

It's like the story of the clock that is broken, the hands stuck at the 4 o'clock position. Well, it's right twice a day!!!!

UNLESS a spacecraft intentionally maneuvers to change, pitch, roll or yaw....it will remain in its last attitude, irrespective of the earth below, or until influences by some outside force....such as atmospheric drag.....

I've gone way off (must have been influences in some way....) but I hope it explains a bit, to those willing to listen and, perhaps, learn along the way. For, it is a good thing to deny ignorance --- or better yet, to promote understanding.