Questions have been raised by many as strange lights lit up the sky last night in parts of Texas, specifically the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Some have reported these strange lights as evidence of UFOS, immediately believing that the only likely source of these lights could be extraterrestrial. Unsurprisingly, many took to social media to show what they captured and start conversations with others who had and had not seen these lights. One local in Mineola, Texas, posted a video of his view of the sighting to X, formerly known as Twitter, saying, “Anyone know what this was that I saw tonight near Mineola, Texas?”
The origin of the lights is far less exciting than what most were hypothesizing.
The strange and off-putting lights were actually traced back to a launch from SpaceX. In the evening of this past Sunday, a rocket, Falcon 9 to be exact, shot up into the sky, launching Starlink satellites. The satellites were set up to specifically go into a low Earth orbit. They were sent out from the Space Force Station on Cape Canaveral in Florida. SpaceX, a tech company focused on spacecraft and satellite technology, is owned and run by Elon Musk. They issued reports of their launch and based on the timestamp and data analytics, people were able to deduce that the lights they saw were actually these satellite rockets.
The satellites were set to fully deploy off the rockets just over an hour after the initial take off sequence. After less than 10 minutes, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rockets came back into Earth’s atmosphere.
Starlink is a satellite service meant to bring global, high-speed internet.
In just the eight days that we have had of 2024, SpaceX has already had three launches. It is reported that they have a goal to beat last year’s launch numbers. Last year, they set a personal record having 98 launches from January 1, 2023 to December 31, 2023. This year, they want to have 144 launch missions.
Starlink satellites have raised concerns for Texans in the past. In July 2023, many Texas residents reported a glowing orb in the sky in which, similarly, many posed theories of extraterrestrial activity on Earth.
