Massive Space Junk Crashes Into Earth’s Atmosphere

Today is Friday the 13th, so it’s fitting that a giant chunk of space junk hurtled towards Earth. “An object the size of a car slammed into Earth’s atmosphere early this morning,” Paul Cox, host of Slooh, said. The international organization of robotic telescopes. But don’t go crawling into your doomsday bunker just yet. The object, called WT1190F (or as the Internet is calling it, WTF) was projected to burn up over the Indian Ocean about 62 miles off the coast of Sri Lanka.

WT1190F reentry on Nov. 13, 2015 https://t.co/7B63BLXlxa #WT1190F #spacejunk pic.twitter.com/Almrubq3JI

— Observing Space (@ObservingSpace) November 13, 2015

The International Astronomical Center and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency hosted a team of veteran U.S. and German observers of spacecraft re-entries to take a Gulfstream business jet up into the air to study the piece of space debris and capture some images. They appear to be the only one to have captured images of the object as it made its way through the atmosphere. They posted their images to Twitter and shot this video:

And, there’s this YouTube video from the Astronomy Center:

Those hoping to catch a glimpse of the object from ground-level appear to have struck out:

Where are you #wt1190f pic.twitter.com/nrOFyuRkjr

— Shalie (@shalikaa) November 13, 2015

Damn it. It's just not our lucky day. #fridaythe13th No one saw #spacejunk #wt1190f anywhere in Sri Lanka =

— Ibrahim Maahil Mohamed (@MaahilMohamed) November 13, 2015

Much ado about nothing?#WT1190F was like #lka #yahapalanaya:
Over-hyped, eagerly awaited – but turns out to be damp squib #අයියෝයහපාලනය

— Nalaka Gunawardene (@NalakaG) November 13, 2015

Fake videos already started spreading #WT1190F

— Rovin Shanila (@Rovinovic) November 13, 2015