Australians are famously rugged and hard to shock.
But recently, a sight in the night sky
left even the most unflappable Aussies exclaiming, "Crikey!"
February 25, 2021, residents of Queensland
are going about their business when this tears open the sky--
twin bright streaks tracing the same flight path,
making this a peculiar video even by today's UFO standards.
CAMERAMAN: What the [bleep] is that?
CAMERAWOMAN: What the hell is it?
CAMERAMAN: That is insane.
Look, it's just disappeared.
NARRATOR: Take a closer look.
At first glance, they look like meteors.
But do meteors fall in a row like this?
And do they have such long tails?
Hundreds report seeing these streaking objects.
And some suspect they are somehow
connected to a secret base almost 1,000 miles away.
Another area in Australia that's
been known for curious activity would be Pine Gap, Australia.
There have been very frequent recordings
of all kinds of unexplained things
in the night sky in that area.
NARRATOR: Pine gap is a top-secret American base
in the Australian Outback that we know
tracks and spies on satellites.
Many also believe it conceals an underground city, where
scientists develop a wide variety of clandestine projects
involving UFOs.
There are numerous stories of flying disks appearing
in the sky over the base, and it's
rumored to contain a plasma gun capable of shooting
down anything in low orbit.
It's alleged that there is a lot
of experimentation in dark technology
that has gone on there.
Construction at Pine Gap started in 1966,
the height of the Cold War.
So it's often referred to as Australia's Area 51.
But is there really a connection between Pine
Gap and these streaking lights?
We turn the video over to the experts.
First, we ask astronomer Marc D'Antonio
if these flaming objects could just be strange meteors.
Meteors move anywhere from 10,000
to 20,000 kilometers per hour when they hit our atmosphere.
This is moving way too slow.
It's only moving at a few times the speed of sound.
NARRATOR: So could these objects have originated from Pine Gap?
Our experts look at the key evidence
that the objects themselves are on fire and say no.
A plasma ray would look like a laser beam or a bolt
of lightning, and an exploding missile
would send parts flying in all directions,
not in this orderly row.
So could they be UFOs?
If so, NASA's Bob Anderson says an advanced civilization would
be unlikely to construct spacecraft
that crossed a galaxy only to burn up on arrival.
You would not expect it to heat up like that
and burn off part of its shield to get
into the Earth's atmosphere.
NARRATOR: Of course, not everything in the sky
is a meteor, UFO, or secret weapon.
This is sort of the characteristic
of a re-entering piece of space debris of some kind.
The lightweight materials burn up and fall away first.
And the heavy materials, like the engines,
those continue for quite some time.
NARRATOR: D'Antonio thinks another big clue
is the specific location of the sighting.
MARC D'ANTONIO: To the right of Australia in the Pacific
is a location that's called the satellite graveyard.
And when satellites are purposefully deorbited to crash
back to Earth, they're deorbited into this one spot
in the ocean.
NARRATOR: In fact, Australia is sandwiched between two areas
where most satellites are deliberately crashed.
More than 300 spacecraft have broken up and dropped there.
They are the most remote regions of the ocean
and farthest from populated areas.
When D'Antonio digs deeper, he finds this object might
be an especially big piece of space junk
that separated into these pieces upon re-entry.
What it turned out to be was a Chinese Long
March that was sent to the satellite
graveyard in the ocean.
NARRATOR: China's Long March rocket
has a massive booster measuring 35 feet long and 9 feet wide.
With roughly one satellite crashing into the ocean
every few weeks, D'Antonio has some advice.
Be very careful when you're out there.
You might get hit by a satellite.
OK, joking aside, we're going to agree with D'Antonio
and call this one space junk, an expired Chinese rocket.
NASA has recently scolded the Chinese
for what it considers irresponsible behavior
in the disposal of expired space equipment.