[meteorite-list] frightful fireball of July 8 ==> July 10 fireball

[mexicodoug at aim.com]

Hi Rob, Listees,

For those who have been following the Israeli pandemonium / Cypriot UFO 
"meteor" story I first reported here, and Rob Matson quickly suggested 
it was the decaying orbit 3rd stage rocket booster of the Israeli 
Shavit, all within 6 hours of the event,  - this appears to be a 
well-embellished but bonafide recovery of a cool piece of the  booster 
rocket which orbit finished decaying at 13:20 UT on July 10, 2008. It 
lofted a top secret spy satellite launched 13 months ago.  And ... it 
fell in the country that best knows how to tell a newsstory ;-)

Rob mentioned the Israeli "Shavit" translates to "comet" - and to think 
this is probably what caused or related to what caused the July 8 
fireball observed between Israel and Cyprus.

A fun read !!  Great picture !!  Cool piece !!

Just fell where it was supposed to be - along the orbit past the 
calculated re-entry point on the Butan/Tibet border and then a little 
past that point along the orbit (though I haven't looked closely) ... 
this still needs to be confirmed, but it sure looks right ... in spite 
of the article's red hot buildings and day to cool off, etc., etc. ...

Best wishes
Doug

Flaming saucer from the sky
- Time raises possibility of Israel satellite debris in Kurseong
VIVEK SINGH AND G.S. MUDUR

The object that fell in Kurseong. Picture by Vivek Singh
July 11: Comrade Karat, while you were lost in
 the nuclear draft last 
evening, an “intruder” from America’s bosom buddy Israel — of all 
places — may have infiltrated the communist bastion called Bengal from 
the sky.

Hear it from Hari Bahadur Chettri of Kurseong: “I was drinking tea when 
I spotted a glowing red object falling from the sky. It crashed near my 
cattle shed with a hissing sound. The heat was so much that the tin 
wall of the cattle shed also turned red.”

The celestial object, around two feet wide and 18 inches high, had not 
been identified till late tonight.

But the time of the landing — 6.30pm — raises a tantalising 
possibility. A US agency had forecast that chunks of a stage-3 rocket 
body of Shavit, an Israeli launch vehicle, would re-enter Earth’s 
atmosphere around the same time. Shavit’s trajectory would have taken 
it over India.

The Centre for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies in Los Angeles had 
predicted the re-entry of parts of the rocket body on July 10 at 13:28 
Universal Time (6.28pm in India). The error margin had been kept at 75 
minutes.

Whether the object is part of that debris or not, it has caused 
considerable excitement in the landing site, Lower Sirubari Busty, 4km 
 from Kurseong town. No one was injured, nor was Chettri’s house damaged 
but the spot where the object hit the ground had a crater almost six 
inches deep, suggest
ing it came crashing at very high speed.

Residents flocked to take a look at the “metal-like” object which they 
described as round, and having fibres and many concentric layers 
inside. The thickness of the “metal” was said to be around half an inch.

Chettri said the object looked “silvery” after cooling last night. It 
turned “black” this morning, with Chettri saying it could be because of 
the overnight rain.

According to the US centre for debris studies, the intense heat caused 
by friction with the atmosphere leads to melting, vaporisation or 
disintegration of objects coming back to Earth. But a component of a 
satellite or a rocket might be intact if its melting point is high 
enough and if its shape allows it to lose heat rapidly, the centre said.

At least 20 objects that were once parts of rockets or satellites have 
fallen back since January 2008, according to the centre for orbital and 
debris studies, which has catalogued each re-entry and its expected 
path. The stage-3 of the Shavit rocket had been launched from Israel’s 
Palmachim Air Force Base on June 10 last year.

Back in Lower Sirubari, many were more relieved than curious. “This is 
the first time we have seen such an object. It was a scary moment for 
us but we were lucky no one was injured. We did not allow the police to 
take away the object initially as we wanted higher-ups=2
0in the 
administration to see it first,” said Kiran Rai.

The district administration said it would take the object to Kurseong 
police station and send it to “technical experts” for identification.

“The object must have fallen from space. We can’t confirm what it is, 
though. We have told the district magistrate,” said Manish Verma, the 
Kurseong block development officer.