Examiner.com September 18, 2014

Conspicuous Russian spy satellite burns up over Rocky Mountains

In the late evening of Sept. 2, dozens of people from New Mexico to Montana witnessed a bright red ribbon cut across the sky as three "rocks" came tumbling down to Earth. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that the sky rocks weren't meteorites, as some suspected, but parts of a Russian spy satellite which broke apart as it fell from orbit.

In the AP article, Mike Hankey, operations manager for the American Meteor Society, explained that the object was recognizable as a satellite because a meteorite would have burned far too quickly to be seen over such a vast area. Charles Vick, an aerospace analyst with GlobalSecurity.org, said in the report that the debris has been tentatively identified as pieces of Russia's Cosmos-2495, a Kobalt-M type reconnaissance satellite.

According to Vick, Cosmos-2495 was supposed to take photos of strategically valuable sites in the U.S. before depositing the film in capsules which dropped down to Earth as the satellite passed over Russia. The satellite succeeded in dropping the film to Russia, said Vick, but parts of the craft didn't leave orbit until they plummeted down to the U.S. Vick's statements are backed by U.S. Strategic Command, which is the organization in charge of American nuclear forces, who confirmed on Sept. 3 that Cosmos-2495 left orbit.

The satellite was likely monitoring U.S. military sites, said John Pike, director of Globalsecurity.org. In the AP article, Pike stated that the main goal of the satellite was to locate targets for nuclear strikes "Deployed hardware, airplanes, ships, tanks, factories, new intelligence facilities, all that stuff." However, Pike suggests, we are spying in just the same manner. James McDowell, an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, estimates that 37 of the 98 spy satellites in orbit are from the U.S. and only 3 are from Russia. But, McDowell said in the report, only about half of the spy satellites are still functional, as many were launched years ago.

As one might expect, Russia has denied any involvement. Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the Russian Defense Ministry, said "One can only guess about the condition representatives of the so-called American Meteor Society were in when they identified a luminescent phenomenon high up in the sky as a Russian military satellite," in a report to the ITAR-TASS news agency on Sept. 9.