[imagesource: YouTube / kevinizooropa]

It’s not a plane, it’s not a UFO, it’s a SpaceX Starlink satellite burning up as it ricochets through the sky.

Alien spotters have looked up before and been fooled by some of Elon Musk’s space debris blazing past, thinking that they were witnessing their own extraterrestrial sighting.

Now similar footage has surfaced, although, this time nobody seemed to be fooled.

The space junk came from a recently launched batch of lost Starlink satellites caused by an unexpected sting in the tail from a solar storm.

Take a look at the flaming Starlink satellite in the Puerto Rican skies, shot by astronomy group Sociedad de Astronomía del Caribe last Monday (February 7):

SpaceX reportedly lost up to 40 satellites out of the 49 that were deployed into low Earth orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket.

The company is blaming a geomagnetic storm, which is what happens when there’s a disturbance between Earth’s magnetic field and charged particles from the sun (solar wind).

Business Insider has a word from SpaceX:

Due to the speed and intensity of the storm, the “atmospheric drag” ascended to levels up to 50% higher than previous launches, SpaceX said in a statement.

That made it harder for satellites to reach their orbital position.

Apparently, no satellite parts will land on Earth.

But still, such a large number of satellites falling out of the sky in one go surely raises a number of serious questions for the company.

[source:businessinsider]