It's spectacular.
Don’t Look Up
People in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico got the lightshow of a lifetime over the weekend when what's likely a SpaceX rocket fell to Earth in a spectacular fireball.
Observers captured multiple videos of the event from the ground. While there seemed to be some initial confusion as to what was causing the fireball, many now suspect it’s likely an old SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage rocket launched in a March 2017 mission. Third-party orbital debris trackers back up this theory.
Anyway, you can check out the show for yourself below:
🔥 FALCON 9 DE SPACEX CAE SOBRE MÉXICO 🇲🇽
Esta noche se ha visto un "#Meteorito" cayendo sobre el norte de México.
🚀 En realidad era la segunda etapa de un Falcon 9 de SpaceX lanzado en marzo del 2017 con la misión EchoStar23.
Se ha desintegrado en la atmósfera completamente. pic.twitter.com/5ERaFTMBJ2
— Frontera Espacial (@FronteraSpacial) February 6, 2022
Space Trash
It’s not entirely uncommon for rockets and other assorted space debris to fall to Earth in spectacular fashion. Just last year, a separate Falcon 9 rocket stage fell over the skies of Seattle in a similar fiery deorbit burn.
SpaceX is also making headlines recently for yet another upcoming Falcon 9 deorbit — except this one’s predicted to smash into the Moon. Since the Moon has virtually no atmosphere, that impact is likely to create a new crater for researchers to study.
As the aerospace company ramps up its launch plans for 2022 — because remember: Elon Musk says they need to launch twice a week to prevent bankruptcy — we can almost certainly expect more space trash to fall to Earth spectacularly in the future. Hopefully, we can avoid any more Doomrockets.
More on SpaceX trash: SpaceX Could Get Sued When Its Derelict Rocket Crashes into the Moon, Experts Say
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