The mysterious bright lights scattering in the night sky of the Pacific Northwest on Thursday were not planes or meteors, but the wreckage of a SpaceX rocket.
That’s what experts say, at least. But not everyone got the memo, so there was plenty of confusion.
“We get a lot of calls about this!” Portland office fees of the National Weather Service Said on Twitter.
He added moments later – warning that he was not an expert in rocket science – that the “widely lit luminous objects in the sky” were found to be debris from a SpaceX rocket that “did not successfully burn the orbit.”
“Diorbit burn” is the technical term for when a spaceship rotates tail-first and fires its rockets before re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere.
Jonathan McDowell, astronomer with Harvard University’s Center for Astrophysics, Wrote on Twitter What people saw in the Pacific Northwest on Thursday night was part of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, which launched in early March. The debris was returning to the atmosphere after 22 days in orbit, he said.
The Falcon carries 9 rockets and Satellites In space for years. SpaceX used the Falcon 9 last year when it became the first private company to launch astronauts into orbit.
Mr. McDowell wrote that the “space junk” seen over Seattle was the result of a plane crashing over miles where the plane flew. He added that Falcon 9 debris was falling to Earth, which was “unlikely to grow,” adding that it would likely fall into the Rocky Mountains near the Canadian border.
SpaceX launches occur regularly in California, Texas and Florida. So for some Americans, it’s common now – or at least common-ish – to see unfamiliar rockets, or their debris, shimmering overhead.
But for people in the Pacific Northwest, it’s still beautiful and fantastic.
In the Seattle and Portland areas, Thursday night’s spectacle will seem more fun and surprisingly inspiring than feared.
One user murmured that she had somehow missed. The second Surprising How astronomers were able to quickly solve the mystery on the Internet, a ship was stuck in the Suez Canal for several days.
Others took the opportunity to inject Elon Musk, founder and chief executive of SpaceX.
“Umm… SW just caught this flight to my home in Portland,” Vince Lavechia, a Twitter user, wrote at 9 p.m., local time. “elonmusk Your rocket? “
SpaceX Twitter feed The mysterious light show in the Pacific Northwest early Friday morning did not carry weight. Neither was Mr. Musk or NASA. The California-based company could not immediately be reached for comment.
But National Weather Service staff were late in tweeting their astronomical impressions – and they’re having fun.
Referring to the constellation in the agency’s Seattle office fee, he wrote: “Yet another satellite shot managed to photobmb.”
Mike Baker And Nicholas Bogel-Burrows Contributed report.
