Namibia Fireball: Jan. 27, 2009
Readers, if you witnessed or photographed this event, please submit a report.

Summary: A Russian Molniya-M rocket reentered Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 27, 2009, at 1905 UT. The ground track of the decaying rocket passed over Namibia where at least two witnesses saw the resulting fireball.

Ground tracks courtesy of The Aerospace Corporation: more.

The rocket was originally launched in Dec. 2008 from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. It carried a Kosmos 2446 military satellite to orbit.

Eyewitness Accounts:

Location: Windhoek, Namibia.
Comments: Corne Bergh: "Yesterday evening (Jan. 27th) at 21H05 local time we saw the most amazing thing coming from the north western skies. At first it looked like airplane lights but within seconds it became a burst of thousands of lights, almost like fireworks. This string of lights travelled in a south eastern direction and were out of sight within 20 seconds. I was not fast enough to take a picture"

Location: Windhoek, Namibia.
Comments: Mr. J.C. Vorster: "I observed a phenomenon last night, Jan. 27, at 21:00 local time. I was looking in a Westerly direction and suddenly saw various sizes of some flaming material moving very fast from North to South with a white smoke tail. Within a few seconds it disappeared over the southern horizon."