The wreckage of a Russian rocket landed in the Earth near South Australia on Monday night (7 August), surprising local residents.
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The rocket that crashed caused a explosion and a noise that shook homes across Victoria, as reported by 7 News Australia. Victoria is a southern Australian state, and the country's second largest city after Melbourne.
The wreckage of the Russian rocket was briefly in the space. It is the third part of a rocket Soyuz that had been launched earlier that day, carrying a navigation satellite Glonass, according to the astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell.
This mission was launched at 9:20 a.m. EDT (1320 GMT) on Monday from the cosmodrome Plesetsk in northwestern Russia and followed a southeastern trajectory heading into space. Η Send to was successful.
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The third piece of Soyuz returned to the atmosphere of Earth, southeast of Tasmania, over the vast ocean near 10 a.m.
The wreckage of the Russian rocket that fell in Australia was not the last piece of the Soyuz, known as Fregat. This vehicle continues to transport the Satellite Glonass towards its expected orbit.
Soyuz's effect on the atmosphere was excellent, with its speed reaching even several kilometres per second, said Michael Brown, associate professor at the School of Physics and Astronomy at Monash University in Melbourne.
"Re-entry of space debris is sometimes confused with meteorites, which are also spectacular, but are usually much shorter events, as they fall into the atmosphere at a much higher speed" Brown said in an emailed statement about Monday's event.
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"It is possible that small pieces of the rocket crashed on land or at sea, but it is rare that space debris damage property", he added.
