It blossomed over Australia on the morning of February 20, local time, and was widely observed, appearing as an expanding milky cloud surrounding a flotilla of pinpoints of light, all drifting across a clear dark night sky.
Totally unexpected, and initially unexplained, it was eventually identified as the explosion of a Briz-M rocket, the upper stage of a Russian Proton rocket that had attempted to launch the Arabsat 4 communications satellite just over a year ago. The Briz-M had shut down prematurely and could not be restarted, leaving Arabsat stranded in a useless orbit from which it was steered, under its own power, to re-entry and destruction over the Pacific last March.
The rocket, still with plenty of potent and corrosive fuel, was in an eccentric orbit ranging between heights of 500 and 14,700 km when something caused it to disintegrate over Australia two weeks ago. Its fuel spilled out and caused the cloud as it expanded and fluoresced in the sunlight. The rocket debris itself, perhaps in more than 1,000 pieces, has added to the dangers of travelling in space, just as does the shrapnel from January's Chinese anti-satellite test.
Meantime, damage by hail the size of golf balls has forced the shuttle Atlantis to retreat from its launch pad for repairs, mainly to its external fuel tank. Its next mission to the ISS is delayed from a launch on March 15 to one likely to come between late April and the end of May.