(TheVerge) – Stargazers in Oregon and Washington were treated to an unexpected show last night: what looked like a meteor shower streaking lazily across the night’s sky that was very likely the remains of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, burning up as it traveled through the atmosphere.
Although SpaceX has not yet claimed responsibility for the spectacle, numerous meteorologists and astronomers ID’ed the lights in the sky as harmless rocket debris. (You can seen plenty of videos of the event in the replies to this Twitter thread.)
“We got a really good show tonight thanks to SpaceX,” James Davenport, an astronomer from the University of Washington, told NBC-affiliate KING5. “This was the top end, what we call the second stage, of a Falcon 9 rocket. It was actually launched about three weeks ago and it did exactly what it was supposed to do: it put satellites in orbit.”
“The only failure it had was it didn’t complete its de-orbit burn, so it didn’t come down when and where we expected it. It’s just been waiting to fall for the last three weeks and we got lucky and it came right overhead.”
The Falcon 9 is a partially reusable two-stage rocket. The first stage, housing nine of SpaceX’s Merlin engines, does the initial heavy lifting, getting the rocket off the ground, while the second stage, with just a single Merlin engine, guides it into a parking orbit. READ MORE
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