Sky watchers across the US South and Midwest, including Arkansas and Louisiana, witnessed the re-entry of space debris from a deorbiting Chinese satellite on Saturday, December 21, 2024.

According to press reports, slowly flying debris moved across the night sky after 10 p.m. and was seen by thousands of people. Debris fell in a north-northwest direction from the Gulf of Mexico through New Orleans, Greenwood, MS, Helena and Corning, AR, eastern Missouri to Iowa.

Astronomer Jonathan McDowell said the disintegrating commercial imaging satellite was Beijing-based SpaceView’s GaoJing 1-01. “(It) re-entered north toward MS, AR, MO over New Orleans on December 21 (10:08 p.m. CST) and was widely observed,” he wrote on the social media platform X.

McDowell also said: “The satellite has been space junk since January 2023 and is dead as a doornail. This was an uncontrolled re-entry.” We knew it was coming down today, but only estimated to within ±2 hours, so we didn’t know where (at 17,000 miles per hour, ±2 hours is more than a trip around the Earth ).”

Last month, debris from a SpaceX Starlink satellite that was launched in 2022 lit up the sky over North Texas.