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Falcon-9-Start auf Vandenberg AFB
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SpaceX's first-ever Falcon 9 launch from California gave a big boost to commercial spaceflight — but it also boosted our planet's store of UFO lore.
Reports about a fuzzy-looking unidentified flying object streamed in from observers in southern Africa and the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Reunion. The sightings came about an hour after the Falcon 9 v1.1 rocket's launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base at 9 a.m. PT (noon ET) Sunday.
The Zimbabwe Mail marveled over the "strange moonlike object" seen from the country's Mashonaland region, as well as from Botswana, Malawi and South Africa. Mauritius' L'Express wondered whether it was a UFO, a satellite or a star cluster.
A retired astronomer from Cape Town, Greg Roberts, gave the correct explanation in an interview with The New Age, a South African publication: "It was propellant or rocket fuel" released by the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage.
After sending several satellites into a pole-to-pole orbit, the Falcon's second stage released its leftover fuel, which is standard procedure to avoid a blowup during its atmospheric re-entry.
"This release by chance coincided with sunset beneath that part of the orbit, as the booster and its deployed satellites flew from south to north directly over Madagascar, about 850 miles high," NBC News space analyst James Oberg explained in an email. Sunlight set the cloud of rocket fuel aglow.
In a Tumblr post, rocket scientist Ben Brockert speculated that the fuel release might be related to a reported anomaly in the attempted restart of the second-stage rocket engine. Reddit has more chatter about the rocket report.
This sort of phenomenon has been seen many times before — and the bottom line is that you can expect an uptick in UFO reports anytime there's a rocket launch, particularly when the rocket is blazing a new trail, like this brand-new breed of Falcon.
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Quelle: NBC
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HARARE, Zimbabwe - There are reports of an unusual moon shaped object that flew across the sky between 7 and 7.15pm on Sunday evening.
Zimbabwe State media says it received calls from people in Karoi, Mashonaland West; Mt Darwin in Mashonaland Central and Mutoko in Mashonaland East provinces, all confirming having seen the object, which they described as bigger than the moon and moving from the east to the north.
People confirmed having seen the object from as far as in Botswana, South Africa and Malawi.
When contacted for comment, an official from the Meteorological Services Department said they can only comment after liaising with their officers in the respective places.
Meanwhile, in Missouri, United States: The Devil's Promenade: Inside the rural Missouri town haunted by mysterious light that even Army engineers are at a loss to explain. A photographer has lifted the lid on a famously unexplained light phenomenon that appears in an area of the Missouri known as the Devil's Promenade
Locals in the Ozarks hills say they have seen the light and heard the tales of it all their lives.
The name of the area is the title of the series, created by artists Lara Shipley and Antone Dolezal,- but the mysterious apparition itself is known to the townspeople in southwest Missouri as the Spook Light.
Spook Light appears as a basketball-sized orb of light, but only every so often and only by chance on a road called E50, where the rolling Ozark hills disappear into the endless flatness of Kansas and Oklahoma.
Spooklight Road: Southwest Missouri's West 50 road is famous to area people as where Spook Light, a bright and aptly named anomaly
Quelle: Zimbabwe Mail
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Quelle:mu
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