{"id":170270,"date":"2025-09-26T09:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/170270\/"},"modified":"2025-09-26T09:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-26T09:02:10","slug":"space-debris-from-starlink-re-entry-spotted-in-sky-above-saskatoon-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/170270\/","title":{"rendered":"Space debris from Starlink re-entry spotted in sky above Saskatoon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cody Koloski had his eyes on the sky Monday night, hoping to see the northern lights dancing above Saskatoon.<\/p>\n

The aurora borealis\u00a0show started picking up near midnight, but then it was interrupted.\u00a0Something unnatural appeared in the sky.\u00a0Koloski\u00a0looked west and saw a bright light moving toward him.<\/p>\n

“I’m like, ‘Huh, interesting,\u00a0kind of strange but cool,’ and then I keep looking at it and it’s getting bigger and brighter,”\u00a0Koloski said. “I had a moment of like, ‘Oh no, is this like a little prelude to something bigger? Are we going to get struck by these meteors or something?’ So, a brief panic.”<\/p>\n

Then the bright light seemed to split\u00a0apart into pieces that started to spin\u00a0as they streaked across the sky, leaving a\u00a0trail of what looked like orange embers in their wake.<\/p>\n

As fast as it began, it was over. The lights fizzled out as they moved eastward.<\/p>\n

WATCH | Starlink re-entry caught on camera:<\/p>\n

Koloski had never seen anything like it before.<\/p>\n

“The video honestly doesn’t do it justice.\u00a0It felt as though I could almost reach up and touch it. That’s\u00a0how close it was.”<\/p>\n

His friend Justin Tan captured the last bit of the strange spectacle on his phone and sent the video to\u00a0Koloski. He posted it online in the Saskatoon forum on Reddit, and people started musing about what it could be. Other Reddit users who witnessed the event in Saskatoon, and in Calgary,\u00a0also shared it online.<\/p>\n

Lights were Starlink\u00a0satellite falling back to earth<\/p>\n

What\u00a0Koloski\u00a0witnessed was actually space debris from a SpaceX Starlink satellite re-entry, said Samantha Lawler, a professor of astronomy at the University of Regina. She’s interested in how satellites are changing the night sky.<\/p>\n

Lawler said Starlink currently has more than 8,000 satellites, which are about the size of a Ford F-150,\u00a0in orbit. Researchers believe the one that burned up above the prairies in the wee hours of Tuesday morning was Starlink\u00a0#1,066.<\/p>\n

Starlink satellites\u00a0have a lifespan of just five years,\u00a0so when they’ve reached their end of life, they fall back down to Earth,\u00a0burning up in our atmosphere, leaving behind\u00a0metals \u2014\u00a0and it’s\u00a0unclear what those long-term effects will be<\/a>.<\/p>\n

They don’t always burn up completely.<\/p>\n

In 2024, Saskatchewan farmer Barry Sawchuk found a big chunk of space debris on his land near Ituna, just west of Yorkton, that turned out to be part of a Space X rocket.<\/p>\n

Then\u00a0a panel the size of a laptop computer was discovered on a farm about 15 kilometres southeast of Hodgeville, Sask.<\/p>\n

Now, scientists are trying to zero in on where pieces of Starlink\u00a0#1,066 may have ended up if they did hit the ground.<\/p>\n

Lawler is asking\u00a0Saskatchewan residents to keep their eyes peeled for any evidence of space debris. She said the Canadian Space Agency advises people to contact the RCMP if they spot something, but she would also love to be notified to assist with her research.<\/p>\n

\"Samantha<\/p>\n

Samantha Lawler says it could become a more common appearance to spot a satelitte re-entry in Saskatchewan, because of Starlink’s orbit. (Campion College, University of Regina\/Submitted by Samantha Lawler )<\/p>\n

“This is really useful information for learning about the disposability practices of megaconstellations,” Lawler said.<\/p>\n

Megaconstellation is the term for a group of satellites working together to deliver\u00a0broadband internet access.<\/p>\n

Lawler also encouraged\u00a0others to keep sharing videos when they capture something strange happening in the sky, because it helps scientists triangulate how the debris moved across the sky and where it might have landed.<\/p>\n

She said it could become a more common appearance to spot a satelitte re-entry\u00a0in Saskatchewan, because of Starlink’s orbit. The pathway means they spend more time over the province, so they are more likely to burn up while overhead.<\/p>\n

“Don’t worry about getting hit by space debris. This is not something that individuals really need to worry about, but as a society \u2014 is this really how we want to be using our orbit? We”re just throwing things away, burning them up in the atmosphere, dropping them on the ground. It’s like billionaires dropping their garbage on our head.”<\/p>\n

Lawler acknowledged\u00a0satellites are important, but said there are better ways to use them.<\/p>\n

“We can try to prioritize making satellites last longer. We can try to prioritize using fewer satellites to deliver services. We can use different altitude orbits,” she said. “There’s a lot of different options here but SpaceX has gotten there first and they’re kind of setting the tone.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cody Koloski had his eyes on the sky Monday night, hoping to see the northern lights dancing above…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":170271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[49,48,87559,87560,9529,66,306,9694,248,87561],"class_list":["post-170270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cody-koloski","tag-samantha-lawler","tag-saskatoon","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-debris","tag-starlink","tag-university-of-regina"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/170271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}