'Space junk' seen streaking over California might have landed in Yosemite

FRESNO, Calif. (KMPH) — Mysterious streaks of light were seen across the sky of California Friday night, shocking those out celebrating on St. Patrick’s Day.

Many people called KMPH, while others posted on social media questioning what exactly those bright lights were in the sky.

Harvard-Smithsonian Center astrophysicist Dr. Jonathan McDowell explained the lights were not aliens, but old space debris.

"This particular object was a piece of equipment that actually used to be bolted on the space station," said McDowell. "It was a Japanese radio antenna that was relaying data from the Japanese Space Station Module all the way up into deep space communications satellite and then down to Tokyo."

McDowell said the communications device was about 3 to 5 feet long. It was installed on the International Space Station in 2009. This device was retired in 2017 and was jolted into space from the space station in 2020 as "space junk."

It was just sitting around on the space station for about three years taking up space and then they went, 'Well okay let's free up the slot for some other experiment,' and so they just jettisoned it into space," said McDowell. "This box of just old equipment was just orbiting the earth falling around the earth every hour and a half for three years."

Stunned spectators had no clue what the bright debris was because there was no warning. Astronomers said they couldn't predict exactly where the object would have entered the earth because it was moving at 17,000 mph.

Dr. McDowell said there are about 20,000 objects orbiting the earth right now, so having an object enter the earth's atmosphere is not uncommon.

"Things like this reenter pretty frequently," he said. "A few times a month even but often it's over the ocean."

Even though most of the Japanese "space junk" burnt up, there's a good chance very small parts of the metal hit the earth.