Did A Russian Military Satellite Explode Over The U.S.?

The satellite, launched from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome near Arkhangelsk on May 6, was designed to drop its film in special canisters from space onto Russian territory. samspace.ru

Russia Denies Burn-Up of Military Spy Satellite Over U.S. -- Moscow Times

The Defense Ministry has challenged reports that a Kobalt-M spy satellite reentered the Earth's atmosphere and burnt up over the U.S., potentially leaving Russian military intelligence photos lying in Colorado or Wyoming.

On Sept. 3, the American Meteor Society recorded more than 30 eyewitness reports of a slow-moving fireball crossing Colorado and into southern Wyoming. Local media reported the event as a meteor entering the atmosphere,



 but amateur space flight observers on the spaceflight101 blog said on Tuesday it must have been a Russian Kobalt-M spy satellite, after comparing the path of the fireball to the orbits of known satellites.

Defense Ministry spokesperson Major-General Igor Konashenkov denied this on Tuesday, however, claiming that Russia keeps close tabs on its satellite fleet and that nothing out of the ordinary has happened.