Space Jellyfish Phenomenon Produced By Gases From Rocket Launch Often Mistaken For UFOs

CAPE CANAVERAL, FL — Florida residents may want to dust off their telescopes to see a possible rare phenomenon in the skies before dawn Friday.

SpaceX is set to launch 53 satellites Friday that could produce space jellyfish.

SpaceX plans to launch the Falcon 9 with 53 Starlink satellites into low orbit at 5:42 a.m. Friday from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Following stage separation, Falcon 9’s first stage will return to Earth and land on the Gravitas drone ship stationed in the Atlantic Ocean. A live webcast of this mission will begin about 15 minutes prior to liftoff.

In a phenomenon that has prompted a flurry of UFO reports in the past, the early-morning launch could produce space jellyfish. The effect is created when a rocket is launched in the early morning or twilight and the sunlight reflects off the rocket plume gases.

Friday's launch is timed to produce this effect that should be visible from Earth.

In the meantime, after six months in space, the Kennedy Space Center will welcome back the Crew-3 astronauts.

SpaceX said the astronauts undocked from the International Space Station at 1:20 a.m. Thursday.

After performing a series of departure burns to move away from the space station, the SpaceX Dragon carrying the crew of astronauts will conduct multiple orbit-lowering maneuvers, jettison its trunk, and re-enter Earth’s atmosphere for splashdown off the coast of Florida approximately 23.5 hours after undocking from the space station. That should put the landing at 12:43 a.m. Friday.

Aboard the spacecraft are NASA astronauts Raja Chari, mission commander, Tom Marshburn and Kayla Barron European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer, who have spent the past six months on the space station.

Crew-3 flew to the space station on the seven-person Dragon when Falcon 9 launched the spacecraft, which the crew named Endurance, from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Wednesday, Nov. 10.

The Crew-3 astronauts have been living and working on the station, keeping busy by contributing to hundreds of experiments and technology demonstrations.

Among them, the crew worked on a variety of plant growth experiments, testing new systems for growing crops and studying potentially drought-resistant cotton plants.

Crew members also tested a handheld bioprinter designed to print bandages made from skin cells directly onto a wound, and a miniature scanning electron microscope.

The crew installed a new device to support studies on fire safety in microgravity and conducted one of the first archaeological experiments in space.

Working in pairs, the astronauts also completed four spacewalks to prepare the station for upcoming solar array upgrades by assembling and installing modification kits and successfully replacing a faulty antenna.

To date, Dragon has made more than 20 trips to the orbiting laboratory.