New Jersey residents were given a space-age scare when they saw Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite hover over the Garden State as the aerospace company launched its latest batch of devices into orbit.
Stargazers were puzzled on Saturday night when they saw dozens of lights soaring in a perfectly linear position above their heads – believing extraterrestrial UFOs were to blame.
Social media is ablaze with hopes that an alien object has decided to visit New Jersey – after the latest round of congressional hearings on flying saucers.
New Jersey sightings, however, are more common.
SpaceX revealed that the lights were simply Starlink satellites passing through the area after launching from Cape Canaveral late Friday.
“This is the fifth flight for the first stage booster supporting this mission, which previously launched Crew-6, the SES O3b mPOWER,” according to SpaceX.
Many people thought the lights were a possible UFO sighting in Negeri Taman.TikTok/@tormentandblasted
This isn’t the first time an anomaly in the night sky has turned into a Starlink satellite.
Earlier this year, researchers from the University of Vermont and the Center for UFO Studies found that Musk’s SpaceX was responsible for an increase in UFO sightings since the outbreak began.
The researchers initially believed that pandemic boredom caused more people to investigate the night sky and reported more than 600 sightings than usual in 2020. But the case coincided with SpaceX’s Starlink satellite.
The light, however, turned out to be a Starlink satellite launched the day before.Twitter/@IAmYhoshuaAdama
SpaceX has more than 3,000 satellites orbiting the Earth. AFP via Getty Images
The company launched dozens of satellites into orbit in May 2019 to provide internet coverage to 50 countries around the world, with reports of UFOs emerging at the same time.
The study suggested that SpaceX was entirely responsible for the increase, concluding that when reports attributed to Starlink satellites were removed, “there was no increase in sightings in 2020 compared to 2019.”
SpaceX has more than 3,000 satellites orbiting the Earth, most of which are easily visible and now form the largest low-orbiting constellation in the sky.
The satellites are likely to cause more confusion in the future as SpaceX aims to have more than 10,000 satellites in the sky by 2027.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
