A sight streaking across the Southern California sky late Friday night and early Saturday morning likely stemmed from the fiery end of a retired Starlink satellite.
Matt Udkow reported the sighting from the Santa Ynez Valley nearly four hours after the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base.
A lifelong stargazer, Udkow said the sight — multiple bright debris and smoke trails around center mass cluster of debris — was unique.
“This was both fascinating, awe-inspiring, and frightening (if man made and not peaceful endeavor),” he said.
Similar sightings and photos were captured around Southern California.
Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist working at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, pinpointed the likely cause. McDowell keeps a detailed tally of Starlink satellites and other aspects of space programs across the globe at his Jonathan’s Space Report website.
On Saturday morning, he identified the likely source of the sighting while providing what he has dubbed a “Starlink precipitation report,” noting regular re-entries of the retired spacecraft.
A Starlink satellite that launched in January 2020 from Florida “was removed from the constellation on March 13 due to suspect components, and its orbit lowered,” McDowell said.
The satellite re-entered over Los Angeles at 12:03 a.m. Saturday, he added.
“They are retiring about 150 Starlinks due to a computer chip that has a tendency to fail — they’d rather bring them down before they fail and not have them stuck in higher orbits,” McDowell said.
There’s a high probability the satellite burned up on re-entry, he added.
Starlink — designed, built and launched by SpaceX — involves a constellation, reportedly expected to have as many as 30,000 satellites, to provide internet access across the globe in areas where the land-based service isn’t available or reliable.
In addition to launching from Florida, Starlink satellites also have traveled aboard Falcon rockets lifting off from Vandenberg since September 2021.
Starlink isn’t just providing dramatic sights on launch and re-entry.
Sightings of a string of pearls or series of Starlink satellites traveling across the sky often prompt quizzical posts on social media.