What would happen if one day, while walking down the street on a quiet night, you suddenly saw a large number of flashing lights crossing the sky? Anyone would be stunned by the sight and probably confused by what they are seeing. That’s exactly what happened to Ches Allen, a real estate agent who, while walking down the street, saw something in the sky collapse before his eyes.
The serendipity that will probably remain engraved in Allen’s memory for the rest of his life, and which he is unlikely to witness again, occurred in March 2021. That night, the young Oregonian immediately pointed his smartphone at the sky and managed to capture the dozens of lights that spread across the celestial vault. He immediately uploaded the video to his Twitter account hoping to get a response from Internet users.
Questions and comments began to arise; he was asked if before the lights scurried across the sky, he had heard a rumble, to which he replied no. A myriad of possible answers began to emerge, there were even those who dared to speculate that it was a UFO plummeting, but there was no clarity for Allen until two years later.
What Did the Man See in The Sky?
In March 2023, Allen spoke on the subject again. He said, “2 years ago, I went out on a mild Oregon evening and looked up to see the most incredible thing I have ever witnessed.” He said that night the ‘magical’ lights confused many cosmic observers, leading them to believe it was a rare star shower or meteor sighting that infiltrated the Earth’s atmosphere.
However, astronomer James Davenport of the University of Washington, explained that the outburst was not a swarm of cosmic dust as it usually is in meteor showers, but rather what Allen probably saw was the remains of a Falcon 9 rocket from SpaceX, the aerospace company of tycoon Elon Musk.
“This was the top end, what we call the second stage, of a Falcon 9 rocket,” Davenport said. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets have become very popular, as they are the private aerospace agency’s ships of choice for basically putting any kind of resource into space. Starlink, also owned by Elon Musk, has used the Falcons to place its large constellation of Internet satellites in virtually all of Earth’s orbit.
What Allen saw was the re-entry of the second stage of a Falcon 9 rocket, which upon interacting with the Earth’s atmosphere, ended up dissolving, causing the flares of glowing lights in the sky.
Although the video may be emotional for observing an amazing phenomenon, unfortunately, these types of events are slowly becoming more and more recurrent. Chinese rocket debris has been seen crashing into the ocean, and even the Moon suffered an impact from a lost rocket. In other words, space debris is now also threatening the skies and the Earth’s orbit as space agencies grow.
Story written in Spanish by Alejandra Martínez in Ecoosfera
