\n A massive luminous spiral spotted in the nighttime sky over various areas of the UK on Monday is thought to be the result of a SpaceX rocket launch in the United States.\n<\/p>\n
\n The fluffy-shaped formation, observable for several minutes prior to vanishing, is thought to have resulted from residual propellant discharged by the spacecraft into orbit.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Falcon 9 rocket launched by Elon Musk’s aerospace manufacturer ascended at approximately 13:50 local time in Florida (17:50 GMT) for a secretive mission commissioned by the US government.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Falcon 9 is designed for reuse. Once it reaches outer space, it deploys its payload\u2014this could be anything from a satellite to another cargo needed for the mission\u2014which then proceeds with its designated task without further assistance from the rocket itself.\n<\/p>\n
\n The rocket subsequently reverses direction and heads back toward Earth. During this process, it releases any remaining fuel, causing it to freeze immediately into a spiral formation because of the high altitude and the rocket\u2019s motion.\n<\/p>\n
\n The light gets reflected from the icy propellant, making it observable on our planet.\n<\/p>\n
\n The luminous whirl was captured in photographs from England and Wales and was observed in various regions across Europe.\n<\/p>\n
\n Astronomer Allan Trow mentioned that it was visible above Wales’s Bannau Brycheiniog national park around 8 p.m.\n<\/p>\n
\n He mentioned that he had witnessed the same occurrence roughly four years earlier.\n<\/p>\n
\n “But these are pretty rare,” he told the LIFEHACK, and agreed the rocket was its likely source.\n<\/p>\n
\n SpaceX stated on X that the launch was part of a United States government National Reconnaissance Office mission. Similarly, the Kennedy Space Center mentioned on X that the launch was a classified mission for the same organization.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A massive luminous spiral spotted in the nighttime sky over various areas of the UK on Monday is thought to be the result of a SpaceX rocket launch in the United States. The fluffy-shaped formation, observable for several minutes prior to vanishing, is thought to have resulted from residual propellant discharged by the spacecraft into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2644,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[513,936,469,937,600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-astronomy","category-rocket-launching","category-space-exploration","category-spacecraft","category-spacex"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/AA1BzWgK-1.jpg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sanggraloka.com\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}