Wednesday, 13 February 2013

Fireball over NW Europe of the evening of 13 February 2013: Re-entry of a Soyuz r/b

Reports are pouring in of a very long duration, bright fireball near 22:15 CET (21:15 GMT) seen from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Reports indicate 30-40 seconds visibility, and an "explosion" halfway, and some reports indicate sonic booms.

This fireball was with a high degree of certainty the re-entry of a Russian Soyuz 3rd stage, #39083 (2013-007B), the 3rd stage from the Soyuz that launched the Progress cargoship Progress-M 18M towards the ISS on February 11th.

USSTRATCOM issued a TIP message indicating decay at 21:15 +/- 1 m UTC near 49N, 13 E.

Below is a quick map (made using Orbitron) of the trajectory and approximate position of the re-entry.
click map to enlarge

Time, general description and reentry data all fit quite well.
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1 comment:

  1. toxygen15/2/13 01:44

    We've got radio spectrum images of the reentry. The Soyuz-U reentered at 80-100km in north Czech Republic.

    some radio images (horizontal axis is frequency vertical is time increasing from bottom to up):
    http://www.astrozor.cz/graphics/upload/reports/110-02.14.13-21_26_29.png

    more images at http://astrozor.cz/

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