Falling space debris may start to be regular occurrence

Photo courtesy of Rome, Wisconsin Police Department

Dozens of area residence saw a long lasting streak of sparks in the night sky early Saturday morning, January 24, 2026, as something entered Earth’s atmosphere and burned up.

The object appeared just before 12:30 am in the northern sky and was captured on cell phone cameras and police cruiser cameras around the state. But what was it.

Experts say it’s likely some form of man made space debris entering back into the atmosphere of Earth. A completely normal event for satellites that are no longer operational or lose contact with their earthly counterparts.

This type of occurrence has been going on for decades… with one of the first widely predicted events being the Sky Lab satellite which re-entered the atmosphere and burned up over the Indian Ocean and Australia on July 11, 1979. 

Today, and into the near future we may see this falling debris as an almost nightly occurrence as the project Starlink has 1000s of satellites orbiting with 1000s more set to launch with each one only having a life span of a few years. The initial launch of Starlink units happened May 23, 2019, so those launched in that early time frame are already and have already re-entered Earths atmosphere, burning up before reaching the ground in a spectacular display of a fireball moving across the sky.

According to Starlink, as many as one to four of the satellites fall to Earth every day.