SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket Debris Across The Night Sky
SpaceX Falcon 9 Rocket: Residents noticed odd fireballs slowly passing through on Thursday night and took to social media to share it wondering what it was. Experts later linked it to SpaceX’s Falcon 9 second stage rocket debris.
The strange fireballs burst into dozens of smaller pricks of light as they lit up the sky in parts of Washington and Oregon in the US while the bystanders were left gasping by the rare sight.
On March 4, SpaceX launched a batch of 60 Starlink internet satellites to orbit aboard a two-stage Falcon 9 rocket. Experts think the re-entering upper stage of that rocket is what caused last night’s sky show, which speckled the sky with bright glowing dots that moved across the sky.
Local reports pegged the event at just after midnight EDT (0400 GMT) on Friday (March 26), or about 9 p.m. local time Thursday on the U.S. West Coast.
“While we await further confirmation on the details, here’s the unofficial information we have so far. The widely reported bright objects in the sky were the debris from a Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage that did not successfully have a deorbit burn,” the National Weather Service (NWS) Seattle tweeted.
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They added in a follow up tweet that “there are NO expected impacts on the ground in our region at this time.”
Some people on social media have excitedly shared videos and photos of the event, referring to the falling debris as a possible meteor shower, “shooting star” or comet. Some have even cited extraterrestrial activity as the cause, though no experts have validated that possibility.
The National Weather Service in Seattle tweeted that SpaceX was the source of the crazy sight.
“The widely reported bright objects in the sky were debris from a Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage that did not successfully have a deorbit burn,” the NWS said in a tweet