Unidentified Lights Illuminate California's Night Sky

Mysterious streaks of light seen in the sky over Sacramento, California were identified by an astronomer at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as burning space debris from a Japanese communications package that was jettisoned from the International Space Station in 2020. The debris created a "spectacular light show in the sky" and was estimated to be about 40 miles high, going thousands of miles per hour. The U.S. Space Force confirmed the re-entry path over California for the Inter-Orbit Communication System.