DALLAS — Several WFAA viewers reported seeing objects falling in the sky over North Texas Saturday night, and videos showing an amazing display of light crossing across the North Texas sky quickly went viral online.
The light show was described as a meteor shower online, but WFAA’s weather team said the moving objects are likely not a meteor shower but probably a piece of space debris breaking up in the earth's atmosphere.
You wouldn't be blamed for assuming the falling debris was part of a meteor shower, though. Two meteor showers are currently flashing in the night sky across the US, the Southern Taurids reached their zenith last Tuesday morning and the Northern Taurids will reach their peak on Nov. 12, according to the Associated Press. The showers will likely continue to be visible through December.
However in this case, it's very unlikely that the light show over Dallas was a meteor, WFAA's weather team concluded.
There are close to 6,000 tons of "space junk" in the Earth's orbit, according to NASA. Most of those materials are moving very fast, about 18,000 miles per hour, almost seven times faster than a bullet, according to NASA.
The volume of space debris in Earth's orbit, and the amount of debris means space junk does "pose a safety risk to people and property in space and on Earth," according to NASA. However, usually, debris falling from the sky breaks up upon reentry and burns up before it hits the earth, according to an article from NASA.
Approximately 160 large objects, such as satellites, made uncontrolled reentries in 2021, according to ESA’s 2023 Space Environmental Report. Most debris, if it makes it to the earth, lands in oceans or uninhabited areas, according to NASA.