8/1/2023 0 Comments Falcon 9 reentry seattleThe disintegrating rocket part split into numerous pieces as it fell into the night sky, prompting reports of airplane crashes or meteor strikes. Reports to the website came in from Medford, Ore., to Vancouver, B.C., with one sighting in the northeast Washington community of Rice. The website for the American Meteor Society received 43 witness reports about the event, according to its website, which showed the doomed booster passed over the Pacific Northwest from the southwest to the northeast. “The widely reported bright objects in the sky were the debris from a Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage that did not successfully have a deorbit burn,” the National Weather Service in Seattle wrote on Twitter. Image credit: Image credit: Cedric Padilla/Twitter A Falcon 9 rocket.A SpaceX rocket booster falling out of orbit made for a spectacular display over much of the Pacific Northwest on Thursday night, prompting calls to authorities and excited posts to social media.Ī second stage from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket had failed to make its deorbit burn earlier this month and burned up in the atmosphere at about 9 p.m., according to reports. The rocket was expected to almost entirely burn up in the upper atmosphere, with no expected impact on the ground, meteorologists said. The Seattle National Weather Service (NWS) noted that the rocket’s speed is much slower than that of meteor showers, which typically move in excess of 45,000 mph. The Falcon 9 stage’s high rate of speed, about 17,000 mph, combined with headwinds in the upper atmosphere, meant that astronomers didn’t know in advance where it would eventually end up disintegrating. Plus lots more smaller bits of course,” McDowell said. He said large pieces of space junk over one tonne burning up in the atmosphere are not uncommon, with 14 having re-entered so far this year. “The Falcon 9 second stage from the March 4 Starlink launch failed to make a deorbit burn and is now reentering after 22 days in orbit,” he wrote on Twitter. In this case, the second-stage rocket didn’t complete the burn planned to slow its velocity and send it straight into the Earth’s upper atmosphere.Īs a result, it remained in orbit for a further 22 days until falling to Earth on the night of 26 March, said Jonathan McDowell, an astronomer at the Harvard – Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics. The rocket’s second stage then uses its single Merlin engine to guide the payload into its desired orbit, after which it is usually directed to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. That stage successfully landed on an ocean-going barge off the coast of Florida. The Falcon 9 features a reusable first stage, which employs nine Merlin engines to lift the rocket into space. Its fitting that the re-entry of a rocket stage from a Starlink satellite launch provided a moment of marvelment from Seattle to Portland and beyond. Image credit: Dan Wright/Twitter Second stage James Davenport, an astronomer from the University of Washington, told NBC affiliate KING5 the debris created a “really good show”.Įxperts said the debris was almost certainly that of the second stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched on 4 March and successfully placed Starlink satellites into orbit. James Davenport, an astronomy professor with the University of Washington, said while the Falcon 9 booster is famously designed to land remotely on a drone ship for reuse, this later stage. The burning debris was visible from the Vancouver, British Columbia metropolitan area and across the US states of Washington and Oregon, including Seattle and Portland, according to astronomers and meteorologists. All nine Merlin Engines reached operational conditions, allowing Falcon 9 to soar into the night skies over Florida’s Space Coast at 1:29 UTC on Tuesday, 8:29p.m. Part of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket has burned up in the Earth’s outer atmosphere over the northwestern United States and western Canada, creating a spectacular show in the night sky over the area. Petrified Forest National Park, AZ - 25134 ( Apr 29 ) El Paso, TX - 38092 ( un 25 ) Launch and Reentry Licenses Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy Commercial.
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