A Russian rocket that broke up re-entering the atmosphere over Colorado and Wyoming early Thursday had just carried a French telescope into orbit, U.S. military officials said.
Glowing trails of space debris were seen over Colorado and Wyoming shortly before sunrise Thursday.
Pieces of the rocket as large as boulders broke off but had mostly disintegrated into shards over the two states, said Navy Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly, spokesman for U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, both based in Colorado Springs.
There were no confirmed reports of debris striking the ground, although a Wyoming Highway Patrol sergeant found a 3-by-5-foot area burned through the snow about 35 feet from the edge of the highway in Riverton. The highway was closed at the time because of bad weather.
No damage was reported, and the rocket debris is not believed to be hazardous.
“It’s not a big deal at all,” Kelly said. “It lit up the sky over Colorado. This is a routine occurrence. This happens every day. It’s just that it’s not over Colorado. Most of the time, these things hit the ocean.”
John and Mary Ann Wilson e-mailed The Denver Post to say they saw pieces of the rocket at 6:15 a.m. during their walk in Fruita, near Grand Junction.
“We wish we would have had a camera,” they wrote. “It was spectacular. It looked like a giant sparkler.”
The SL-4 rocket, made in Russia, was used to launch France’s space telescope, similar to the U.S. Hubble Space Telescope, into orbit. It was launched from Kazakhstan.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
