The discarded Falcon 9 rocket had been orbiting the earth since it launched 60 Starlink satellites on March 4th.
22 days later the stage 2 rocket which had failed to make a deorbit burn returned. And when it was re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and burning out in the night sky.
#BREAKING UPDATE: This is new video just in from KOMO News viewer Amy Warren from West Seattle showing what @NWSSeattle now says is the debris from a Falcon 9 rocket 2nd stage that did not successfully have a deorbit burn. pic.twitter.com/TOtvPDwA2w
— Preston Phillips (@PrestonTVNews) March 26, 2021
The cost of a Falcon 9 second stage is around $10 million. McDowell estimates when the rocket appeared it was 60km or 40 miles up. That’s just on the edge of low earth orbit and 30 miles higher than planes fly.
My son in-law Brent Marshall captured this video over football field in Wilsonville, OR #falcon9 ? pic.twitter.com/2xYGWjLRBo
— ElisaJaffe (@ElisaJaffe) March 26, 2021
Hundreds of videos capture the event
SpaceX and NASA anticipated this failed rocket would reenter the earth’s atmosphere. They knew it would be Thursday, but they could only give the event a 5-hour window.
McDowell tweeted out, “But remember it’s going 17000 mph, so a 5 hour time uncertainty means an 85,000 mile (53000 km) location uncertainty. This is more than one entire loop around the Earth. That’s why we couldn’t tell in advance it would be the Seattle area that would see the reentry.”
