Weird Fireball Over California Sparks UFO Frenzy - But What Was It?

A mysterious burning object which streaked across the southern California sky mystified locals this week.

The fiery object - of course - sparked rumours that it was a crashing UFO, and many other observers thought it was a huge meteor crashing to Earth.

‘What the heck was that? A missile? A UFO? Or a meteor?’ one witness asked.

The object was visible in Nevada and Utah as well as California.

But as residents flocked to YouTube and social media to discuss the strange object, it slowly emerged that it was almost certainly man-made.

Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics said that the debris was a Chinese rocket stage from the Long March 7 rocket, launched on June 25.

McDowell said, ‘The rocket stage reentering over the western US tonight was from the first launch of the CZ-7, one of China’s new generation of rockets

‘So far in 2016 there have been 25 reentries of objects massing 1 ton or more. But objects of 5 ton+ class like this are rare.

‘Only bigger reentry so far this year was a Russian Zenit rocket stage that came down over Vietnam on New Year’s Day.’