Letter from Stewart and Sally Rau: lit-up stick over Tchipise (the Columbia tether)

What was reported

Sally Rau writes that she and her husband Stewart, of Eastlea, Harare, were at a braai at Tchipise near Messina on the night of 10 March 1996, breaking their journey home to Zimbabwe, and as usual watched for satellites between 7:30 and 9 p.m. Looking toward the Milky Way she spotted a satellite, then something else: a lit-up stick crossing the sky in a different direction and travelling sideways rather than like a satellite. Being 80 percent blind in her left eye, she asked Stewart whether she was seeing things; he saw it too. It seemed to fade before reaching the horizon. They ask whether anyone else reported it or whether it was a meteorite. Hind answers that it was the tether from the Columbia space shuttle, which broke and came down to Earth.

What Hind made of it

Hind identifies it confidently as the broken tether from the Columbia space shuttle descending to Earth.

Explanation offered
Columbia space shuttle tether (Hind); meteorite (witness's suggestion)

In their words

• But it was very peculiar ... because it travelled sideways.

• the tether rope attached to Columbia space shuttle, which broke and descended to Earth.

Cross references

• Columbia space shuttle tether

Source

Cynthia Hind, UFO Afrinews No 15 (January 1997), spread 20