On the night of March 25, 2021, videos and photos of a series of fireball lights in the North Pacific night sky gained traction on social media. Some users commenting on the footage claim that the images show an “unidentified flying object” (UFO), “aliens” or a “meteorite”. Experts said the light show was caused by re-entering the second phase of a Falcon 9, a SpaceX rocket launched on March 4.
A video of the incident as seen in Portland, Oregon, was captured by KATU News reporter Genevieve Reaume, here . The local outlet King5 has published here a compilation of footage of the lights seen from the state of Washington
“So. this UFO has just been seen over Washington and Oregon. WELCOME our new STRANGER OVERLORDS! ”, Reads the title of a Facebook post with a TikTok clip (here). Other reports (here and here) claim that their footage showed a meteor or meteorite.
On March 26 at 00:18 ET Jonathan McDowell, astronomer at the Center for Astrophysics, Harvard & Smithsonian (here) identified the object on Twitter ( here ) as the second phase of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched on March 4, which could not ignite a bit and now enters a orbit again after 22 days. ‘
The National Weather Service in Seattle also said on Twitter early in the morning on March 26 ( here ) that according to ‘unofficial information’, the objects in the air were debris from the SpaceX rocket. In subsequent tweets, the office explained why the objects were not meteors, based on their input angle and slower speed ( here ).
The Falcon 9 is a “reusable, two-stage rocket” (here). A diagram of the separation of the two phases can be seen here in an article from USA Today. McDowell said the seven-meter-long stage was “supposed to kill itself across the ocean south of Australia” ( here ).
McDowell, who was contacted by email by Reuters, explained that the orbit of the rocket, which was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida (here), was detected by the US space force as an object 47782 and that the re-import of which ‘was predicted, the exact time was not known in advance. ”
” A rocket that re-enters, melts and disintegrates into many lumps that operate on parallel tracks, just as observed, ” he said. “There is no doubt that what people saw was the exposition and reintroduction of object 47782 into the space debris.”
James Davenport, research assistant at the University of Washington’s Astronomy Department, also attributed the event to the SpaceX rocket youtu.be/ekJanB4cjUk?t=45, in an interview with local outlet KING 5 News (NBC Seattle) . ‘It did exactly what it was supposed to do, and it put satellites in orbit. The only failure it had was that it did not complete deorbit combustion, and it did not come down when and where we expected it to, ‘he added.
Similar images were seen in Australia in February 2021 when debris from a Chinese rocket burned when it re-entered the Earth’s atmosphere (here), and in May 2020 with the entry into a late-stage Russian rocket (here) .
“Remember there is a lot of energy in a spacecraft launcher,” McDowell said. “The energy was given to the stage during the launch and now you get it back in a short time.”
SpaceX did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
VERDICT
Untrue. Experts believe that footage from a light show in the Northwest Pacific on March 25, 2021 shows how a SpaceX rocket re-enters the atmosphere.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.