Utah NASA Ambassador Patrick Wiggins confirmed that the mysterious lights streaking across the sky of western United States on Wednesday night is a "rocket body" or "rocket booster" from a Chinese spacecraft heading back towards earth.

The fireball lit up the skies across California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, and Utah at around 9:40 p.m. local time on Wednesday (12:40 a.m. EDT and 04:40 p.m. GMT on July 28). US Strategic Command spokeswoman Julie Ziegenhorn confirmed that it was the Chinese CZ-7 that re-entered the atmosphere.

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The rocket, which was launched on June 25 from China's Wenchang Satellite Launch Center, was used to provide research and development and advisory services to the US Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.

In announcing the new-generation rocket launch, which is the second stage of China's Long March 7 rocket, China said it had reached another milestone in its space program and is on track to place a second space station in orbit this year.

The 6-ton rocket stage hit the planet's atmosphere at about 18,000mph (29,000 km/h), according to Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

"So far in 2016 there have been 25 re-entries of objects massing 1 ton or more. But objects of 5 ton+ class like this are rare," he posted on Twitter. "Only bigger re-entry so far this year was a Russian Zenit rocket stage that came down over Vietnam on New Year's Day."

Rockets that are launched to orbit sometimes shed components that fall back to earth. These components that fall back at high-speed heat up because of friction with the atmosphere and break up as increasing density causes rapid slowdown, according to Global News. Some pieces may survive.

Tagsspace station, Space Lab, China Long March 7, CZ-7, rockets