'Extremely likely' space oddity was burning satellite

A spokesperson for an American nonprofit space research group says the fireball observed in the night sky over Lake Superior earlier this month was likely a SpaceX Starlink satellite burning up on a scheduled return to the atmosphere.

Sault Ste. Marie visual artist Jeff Dixon was photographing the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky over Lake Superior Provincial Park on the evening of July 3 when he noticed a slow-moving fireball moving above the horizon.

"I thought it was a satellite flair or a plane, but it kept getting brighter," said Dixon in a previous SooToday story.

SooToday's Lake Superior webcam also captured the same object in the sky, at about 11:30 p.m. on the same evening. That timing coincided with a reentry of a SpaceX StarLink satellite that was scheduled to reenter orbit.

SooToday reached out to The Aerospace Corporation, a nonprofit research group that tracks reentry of materials from orbit and received a response Thursday from spokesperson Parker Wishik.

"Our [Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies] reentry watch team says it is extremely likely the object you’re referring to is STARLINK-3373 based on your observation," said Wishik. "The time of sighting matches within 1 minute of our predicted reentry time, and our reentry prediction path also corresponds to being just north of Lake Superior."

Canadian government agencies who were contacted by SooToday shortly after the sighting, including Transport Canada, the Department of National Defence and Canadian Space Agency, were unable to confirm what the object was.

A recent report by The Canadian Press said there are "thousands of Starlink satellites in orbit that are expected to re-enter Earth in batches over the next few years."