(meteorobs) Fragmenting Fireball Over Texas and Louisiana February 27, 2013

[Alan Pickup]

I suspect that this fireball was the re-entry of the Chinese CZ-4B 
rocket that launched Yaogan 14 on May 10 last year. This has a NORAD 
catalog ID of 38259 and an international designation of 2012-021C. The 
latest TIP message on Spacetrack (issued at 12:16 UTC) suggests that 
this decayed just after crossing the equator northbound near 3degN 
88.6degW on February 27 at 09:06 UTC (03:06 CST).

If it survived a little longer in orbit, then the following ground-track 
should represent its motion northwards in the vicinity of Galveston:

UTC        Latitude(degN) Longitude (degW)
09:08           24.7            92.8
09:09           28.8            93.7
09:10           32.9            94.6
09:11           37.0            95.6
09:12           41.1            96.8

Regards,
Alan Pickup

-- 
Alan Pickup /
Edinburgh  /
Scotland  /