A huge blue spiral appeared in the sky of Europe at 9 at night. It was the wake of a spacex rocket

It is hard to believe, but the last night were not aliens either. If you were looking at the sky at 20:55, European central time, you could see a bright blue spiral illuminating the night. It was a Spacex rocket.

A strange show. In United Kingdom, Belgium, Poland either Ukraine. From The clean skies of Sierra Nevadain Granada. Virtually all of Europe has managed to capture the spiral light that crossed the sky last night.

They soon appeared photos on social networks. People asked what that strange phenomenon was. It is not a usual show, although it has already been seen in Hawaii, Alaska either Iceland.

A Falcon 9 of Spacex. Neither a missile, nor a satellite, nor a galaxy about to swallow us. Nor a UFO. The object had a name and surname because it was a Falcon 9 rocket of Spacex by recentrating in the earth’s atmosphere.

He had taken off from Cabo Cañaveral, east of the United States, two hours before. The Spy Nrol-69 satellite of the American National Recognition Office (NRO) had put in orbit. And he was returning to the earth to disintegrate in the atmosphere in a controlled way.

What caused the spiral. Before a controlled reentry, the 13.8 -meter length rocket rotates to get rid of the fuel that is still in its deposits; A process called passivity.

The low temperatures instantly froze the propellants released by the rocket, which added to the turn movement and the position of the sun caused the light show over Europe. The turn is what made it look like a spiral, and the sunlight was what illuminated the frozen wake.

Nothing to do with the incident of Poland. In February, the second stage of a Falcon 9 rented without control over Europe. Several pieces of the rocket fell into populated areas of Poland, without causing damage (except the dismissal of the president of the Polish Space Agencyfor its management of the incident).

In this case, and as is usually the case, the second stage of Falcon 9 successfully turned on its engine to fall controlled in the atmosphere, far from populated areas. They were the light conditions and the flight profile that made its wake visible in the European night sky, without further consequences than the scare of some European spectators.

Images | Jay in Kyiv, High Calar Observatory

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