Lights of unknown objects over Phuket sea

[PJ33]

orosee -> Top post!!!

[BigBadGeordie]

Guys, you must have seen at least a few rocket launches in your lifetime, Space Shuttle, Ariane, etc.Plus the "made for TV audiences" animations, graphical descriptions in newspapers and magazines, what not all.

The Indian rocket has a solid fuel first stage with a number of solid fuel boosters attached - some have two lines of boosters that fire in sequence. What happens is that the first stage plus boosters are fired (the first, main stage may also be fired a bit later than the boosters), the boosters burn until they run out of fuel, and the mass of the empty boosters is jettisoned after what could be 2 to 5 minutes, at a height that could be 20-30 km. Since rockets don't go up straight but at an angle so that they can pick up the horizontal speed necessary for a stable orbit, when the first boosters are jettisoned the rocket might be going as fast as 3,000 km/h - so these things won't fall straight down, but continue to fly for a decent amount of time before hitting the ground (or water). The main first stage will eventually also burn out (a lot higher now, and faster) and eventually plunge into the ocean, this time the Pacific. The separation of boosters and main stages will often create a plume of gases and trailing smoke, such as the ones that can be seen very nicely on the photos on the first page.

Now according to the Indian website on the GPS project (they also have the accurate numbers to my estimates), the satellite made orbit successfully. The satellite is a tiny thing of 5-10% of the total mass of the rocket, sitting on top of the launch vehicle. Everything below the satellite is the rocket. The Phuket newspapers talking about "satellite debris" are morons because if there would be real satellite parts 240 km off Phuket (or 20, whatever), then the ENTIRE rocket must have come down with it. Possibly wrestled down by an angry naga. But, it's "rocket debris". Not even "space debris", because whatever came down "near" Phuket has never been to space, it's atmospheric debris. Boosters, since there's more than one. Or maybe the first stage separation, depending on distances, height and speed.

*Just looked at the photos again and there's only one cloud streak, so most likely stage 1-2 separation. That should be sufficient to lob the debris from India to Thailand.

Nah It was a snakey scary thingy, but the big question is........Did you see the lottery number?

[Johnny S]

Could it be ghosts .... ?

[jtTamad]

Orosee:,why the wide time interval for "estimated" re entry? Almost a month. The debris must have reached orbit, huh?

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[bendejo]

So they shot the rocket at the snake?

[orosee]

Orosee:,why the wide time interval for "estimated" re entry? Almost a month. The debris must have reached orbit, huh?

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I'd say that since there is always a possibility of a launch delay (let's say because of weather, or technical problems), the start would have been on one day in a window of about a month or so - since ships are slow to get out of the way on short notice, they issued the warning for the entire window. Once the rocket was launched, things would happen according to schedule within minutes - the spaceflight101.com link on first page actually explains it much better and with the correct numbers, if one is interested in this technology. The image below - take note that speed is in meters per second, not km per hour - multiply with 3.6 to get a feeling how fast that is. Unfortunately you can't see the horizontal component (distance from launch site to East).

By the way, cool orbit - 284 km closest to 20,650 farthest from surface.