Pilots flying over Irish airspace spotted “bright lights, swirling and letting off gas”
A bright object spotted in the skies above Ireland on Sunday(Image: X / Shauns_Aviation)
Pilots flying over Irish airspace on Sunday night were stunned after spotting ‘swirling bright lights’ in the sky, which turned out to be a fuel dump from a SpaceX rocket launch.
On Sunday, at around 6.30pm Irish time, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carried 28 Starlink broadband satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
Some pilots flying over Ireland noted “bright lights, swirling and letting off gas” and what looked like an “explosion”, but the “spectacular sight” was actually a fuel dump from the SpaceX rocket.
Editor of Astronomy Ireland, David Moore, who was watching the launch, explained that rockets always carry extra fuel in the case of an emergency, but to stop an explosion on re-entry, the leftover fuel is dumped – resulting in “impressive displays”.
“It was a SpaceX rocket doing what is called a fuel dump,” David told the Irish Mirror.
“I actually watched the launch from the USA online at 6.30pm but we did not expect the fuel dump over Irish skies! It’s nothing too serious, but a very spectacular sight!
“Basically they always put a bit more fuel into rockets than they need to cover any unforeseen circumstances. These lower stages of rockets don’t make it into orbit and burn up on re-entry after a while.
“To stop the leftover fuel from causing an explosion on re-entry they pump it overboard – a ‘fuel dump’. The Sun, visible from that high up even though it is dark from Ireland, lights up this ‘cloud’ of fuel causing these impressive displays.
“A lot of us (we have around 100,000+ followers) were out looking at the new Comet Lemmon that has just become visible to the naked eye (and will get five times brighter in the coming days). This comet is a very rare spectacle that we can, and did, predict, unlike fuel dumps!”
Dedicated aviation journalist Shaun’s Aviation posted a snippet of a conversation between pilots and air traffic controllers on Sunday night, with one pilot describing it as an “explosion”, while another shared how it appeared like “bright lights”.
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Pilot: “Three yankee romeo request.”
Air traffic control: “Alright, go ahead sir.”
Pilot: “Just if you’re not busy, have you got any traffic significantly high above us in our 11 o’clock? Bright lights, swirling and letting off gas it looks like.”
Air traffic control: “Ok, that’s a copy thank you”.
Pilot two: “Yeah we are getting a plasma, that’s him. He’s moving now, to the east, explosion.”
Air traffic control: “Ah who was that last call from please?”
Pilot two: “That’s the Portugal 1325.”
Air traffic control: “Portugal 1325, roger, I’m confirming you’re observing it now.”
Pilot two: “It just disappeared now. It looks like an explosion and then it was moving eastward and now it’s disappeared.”
Air traffic control: “Copy. Shamrock Three Yankee Zero, are you still observing anything?
Pilot one: “Yeah it disappeared for us too, we started seeing it about two minutes ago. It’s illuminated very bright, and then kind of broke up into a circular array and disappeared.”
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