SpaceX rocket debris likely the reason for strange lights seen in skies over Pacific Northwest

Bright lights seen in the skies over parts of British Columbia, Washington state and Oregon on Thursday night was likely space junk, according to the National Weather Service and other astronomy experts. People were speculating on social media on what the lights could be and whether they were meteors or even unidentified flying objects. Astronomer Jonathan McDowell, who works at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said on Twitter that a SpaceX Falcon 9 second stage rocket from an early March launch had failed to make a “deorbit burn“ and was reentering the atmosphere.