A satellite believed to be owned by Elon Musk lit up Victorian skies and dazzled early risers when it re-entered Earth’s atmosphere as space junk on Tuesday morning. The space junk, which early indications suggest is one of Musk’s SpaceX Starlink satellites, blazed across the sky about 5.27am, leaving behind a flaming orange trail flecked with green. Many Melburnians thought they had witnessed a slow-motion meteor. Loading However, Associate Professor Michael Brown, of Monash University’s school of physics and astronomy, said there were telltale signs it was a space junk re-entry instead. “It was coming in almost horizontally, and coming in pretty slowly compared to, say, a meteor, which gave people plenty of time to get their mobile phone out and get some footage and perhaps say profanities as the thing came in,” he said. Advertisement Starlink satellites, which provide internet connections, orbit in space at a relatively low altitude of 500 kilometres and therefore experience strong atmospheric drag. When the satellites’ engines give out, they are dragged back into the atmosphere over the course of months or years, where the friction of reentry causes them to burst into flames spectacularly. “These are internet satellites that [Musk’s company] SpaceX has been launching many thousands of in recent years, and the first ones that they launched a few years ago are now past their prime and are starting to come down in increasing numbers,” Brown said. Scientists believe the space junk was a SpaceX starlink satellite. SpaceX “So these satellites re-enter somewhere over the globe, pretty much every day, and we had one of them reenter over Victoria early this morning.” Astronomer at Swinburne University Alan Duffy said space junk travels at about seven kilometres per second during reentry, which is three to four times slower than a meteor. In video on social media, the satellite can be seen leaving behind multiple molten trails that contain a greenish tinge, both also clear indicators that it is space junk, not a meteor. Advertisement