CHINA A mysterious glowing object flying through the sky over Beijing has sparked many speculations about UFOs, but experts say it could be a remnant from a SpaceX rocket.
Residents in Beijing and many other places in China encountered mysterious flying objects late last week. The unusual object quickly became a topic attracting many searches on Chinese social networks with more than 900,000 posts, according to Interesting Engineering.
Witnesses observed and took pH๏τos of unidentified flying objects in the sky at around 6 p.m. on January 14 local time. A resident said the weather in Beijing that day was very clear, cloudless and the object glowed but did not flicker. It has three light sources and is shaped like an isosceles triangle, which eventually dissipates like mist and disappears without a trace.
Many residents in Tianjin, Shanxi and Shandong also reported UFOs. Eyewitnesses often described the object as a “dim ball of light” flying rapidly from west to east without making any sound. Some observers even ruled out the possibility that it was a plane because they did not see flashing lights.
Wang Zhuoxiao, a researcher at the Center for Astronomy Technology at Tsinghua University in Beijing, offers one possible explanation. He said that the mysterious object could be a trace of a rocket launch, specifically a rocket deploying SpaceX’s latest Starlink satellite constellation. Wang explained the flight path of the Falcon 9 rocket carrying 22 Starlink satellites into low Earth orbit from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, taking it over northern China at a 53-degree angle to the south. Wang emphasized that after deploying the satellite, the rocket is likely to discharge excess fuel, a process that can scatter light and create clouds around the rocket. The unusual shape observed in the “cloud” may be due to the falling motion of the rocket to release more fuel. Another anonymous astronomer at the Beijing Planetarium also supports the above hypothesis. According to him, a similar scene in northern China on September 13, 2023 was also related to the missile cloud formed after the launch.
