A luminescent streak across the night sky reportedly prompted several concerned viewers to call into a local Tucson news station. Reports of the sightings came in from southern California to parts of Arizona on Monday, March 18.
However, what caused the streak was not a UFO but rather the SpaceX Starlink Falcon 9 Rocket that left a plume across the sky as it successfully carried a payload of 22 satellites into low orbit.
People took pictures and videos of the Falcon 9 as it launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The Starlink mission followed SpaceX’s reported deployment of its 6,000th Starlink satellite into orbit on Friday, March 15.
The Falcon 9 completed Monday’s mission by landing on the “Of Course I Still Love You” drone ship in the Pacific Ocean. The satellites put into low orbit will be used as part of a constellation of thousands of orbitals, eventually providing high-speed Internet access worldwide. The mission lasted less than 10 minutes from launch to landing.
The mission comes after the third test flight of SpaceX’s Starship on Thursday, March 14. The third flight was reportedly more successful than the previous two, but still failed to meet some key thresholds to make it safe for human flight.
However, SpaceX emphasized this is the “fastest and furthest that the Starship has ever flown.” Eventually, NASA plans to use the Starship to send astronauts to the moon by Fall 2026.
SpaceX founder Elon Musk has even greater ambitions for the Starship. Musk predicts that the Starship will take humans to Mars by the end of the decade, and a future version of the spacecraft will travel to “other star systems.”
Another milestone for SpaceX is coming up as the company plans to launch its 30th contracted cargo mission to the International Space Station on Thursday, March 21, according to Space.com.
