Debris initially mistaken for meteor shower

Debris from Chinese rocket CZ-2F was spotted falling back to Earth across skies in the south of Portugal and Spain between late Monday night and the first hours of Tuesday morning.

Several people in the Algarve quickly took to social media to post videos of what they believed was a meteor shower.

But as Observador newspaper points out, Spanish astronomy website Sky Watch Sentinel had already warned that the debris was due to re-enter the atmosphere sometime between 00.27pm and 00.37pm.

The rocket was launched on June 5 with the goal of transporting three astronauts to the Shenzhou-14 space station.

By Michael Bruxo
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