What you’re going to see is not a meteor shower, it’s a SpaceX Starlink satellite that is burning up in the Earth’s atmosphere.
On Monday, the astronomy group Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe captured flaming debris that was flying through the air and then posted it on YouTube.
A total of 49 SpaceX Starlink satellites were launched in Falcon 9 rocket into orbit last week. But, due to a geomagnetic storm, 40 satellites were lost.
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In the video, you can see fireworks emerge over Puerto Rico. It wasn’t clear if its pieces of the same satellite or a different one that had broken apart.
The Space Weather Prediction Center said that the disturbances between the Earth’s magnetic field and charged particles from the sun are the main reason for Geomagnetic storms.
It was hard for the company to put the satellites in their right position in the orbit anymore.
However, SpaceX Starlink satellites will reenter the Earth’s atmosphere and burn up. Some of them have already burnt.
University of Leiden expert Marco Langbroek said that the number of the reentered satellites to the Earth’s atmosphere on February 7 is unclear.
“The two objects could belong to one object that has broken up earlier. Or be two separate objects close together in the same orbital plane”. Langbroek said.
The satellites will probably continue to re-enter the atmosphere until mid-February, but they won’t pose any threat to people.
Langbroek said that “Starlink satellites are not very big and do not have big rocket engines. So there is very little chance that anything remains and reaches Earth’s surface from these reentries: it will all burn up in the atmosphere,”
