Chinese space debris lights up California sky - Space and Astronomy. Chinese space debris falling towards Earth could be the origin of the luminous fireball that crossed the sky of southern California on the night of April 2.
Astronomer Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says so. The fall of the Chinese module, weighing approximately 1,500 kilos, would have generated the light trail which was spotted from the Sacramento area to San Diego around 1.40 am local time.