SEATTLE (AP) — Burning debris from a rocket lit up Pacific Northwest skies Thursday night, the National Weather Service in Seattle said.
Debris from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage burns in the atmosphere as it returns from space. The light show was visible across much of the Pacific Northwest, including from the backyard of this home in Oregon City, Ore., on Thursday, March 25, 2021.
Courtesy of Chelsea Swanson
“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 service said in a tweet about the astral occurrence that the Seattle Times reported was seen shortly after 9 p.m.
There were no reports of damage or other impacts on the ground.
The rocket delivered Starlink satellites, built in Redmond, Washington, into orbit earlier this week, the Times reported.
SpaceX said Wednesday that the Falcon 9’s first stage returned to Earth and landed as planned on its ocean-going barge off the coast of Florida.