Mysterious light phenomenon in SpaceX Starship livestream
During the livestream of SpaceX's September 28 Starship test flight, a strange, bright shape appeared above the Earth, which many on social media called a UFO or a mothership. Neither SpaceX nor NASA has said what can be seen in the footage.
The test flight, called Starship Flight 14, launched on September 28 from SpaceX's Starbase facility in South Texas. According to reports by Finland's stara.fi and Portugal's pplware.sapo.pt, about eight minutes after liftoff an elongated, slightly curved, bright shape appeared on the camera feed above the curvature of the Earth, with a brighter point at one end. According to pplware, the phenomenon caught the attention of thousands of viewers watching the broadcast and quickly became one of the most commented-on topics on social media.
Screenshots and short video clips of the footage spread on Reddit and X, where several users spoke of a craft of alien origin, and some explicitly of a mothership. According to none of the sources is there any support for this interpretation. According to unnamed experts quoted by pplware, the shallow depth of field of the onboard cameras makes it difficult to determine the true size or distance of such an object: a tiny particle close to the lens can easily appear to be a distant, enormous structure.
Neither SpaceX nor NASA has issued a statement about what can be seen in the footage, and according to none of the sources have they responded to the speculation since. The mundane explanations put forward include the rocket's exhaust or a gas cloud, a piece of ice breaking off the spacecraft, or debris created when the Super Heavy booster separated. The user who shared the original footage on Reddit later went back over earlier phases of the flight and found a similar gas cloud, which in their view may have been the same phenomenon, only seen from a different camera angle. This is not an official explanation either, merely one viewer's own observation.
The test flight was a milestone in itself: it was the first time the Starship system reached Earth orbit, after all previous tests had been suborbital flights. The more than 120-meter vehicle carried 26 next-generation Starlink V3 satellites, and for the first time delivered operational Starlink satellites to orbit. The planned ten-hour flight was cut short due to an engine anomaly; Starship then reentered the atmosphere and ended its journey in the Pacific Ocean.
For now, the footage has left more questions than answers: the origin of the phenomenon remains open until SpaceX or NASA comments on it.
The sober take
According to experts consulted by pplware.sapo.pt, the phenomenon was probably distorted by the camera's limited depth of field, and the most frequently mentioned mundane explanations are the rocket's exhaust, a gas cloud, ice debris, or space debris from the engine separation. No official confirmation appears in any of the sources.
Sources
- stara.fi: Outo valoilmiö SpaceX : n suorassa lähetyksessä – UFO - harrastajat innostuivat – Stara . fi
- pplware.sapo.pt: OVNI na Starship ? Mistério na transmissão da SpaceX deixa dúvida