On April 2, 2024 those looking at the sky were a little stunned at what they saw.
A video captured bright fiery lights shooting across the sky in what appeared to be a straight line around 1:30 a.m. in Moreno Valley, 70 miles east of Los Angeles.
“What the hell!,” one puzzled onlooker said. “Oh it’s a meteor shower, yeah, look at that s—, what the hell.”
Some people on social media thought it may be debris from the SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from the previous day.
Others thought it could be the Chinese Shenzhou 15 Orbital Module rocket that was forecasted to re-enter near LA around 1:45 am.
This was the reentry of the Shenzhou 15 orbital module,
over S California circa 0140 PDT Apr 2— Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589) April 2, 2024
What is peculiar is that Space X and NASA were asked for comment but have not responded to requests from Fox News.
WATCH: Mysterious lights streak across the Southern California skies around 1:30am Tuesday.https://t.co/oY2AedKkea pic.twitter.com/P0axLTZXue
— PatriotJuls 1776 (@JRColbert1) April 3, 2024
From the LA Times:
Early Tuesday morning, night owls spotted streaks of light across the sky, with some assuming the event might be related to SpaceX’s Monday night satellite launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Another SpaceX launch a couple of weeks earlier had caused a stir with its eye-catching streak of light and contrail.
The true cause, however, was less obvious and originated farther away. It was Chinese space junk.
Though many assumed more mysterious sources — aliens, spy drones, unforeseen meteors — what onlookers saw at 1:40 a.m. was the expected “reentry of the Shenzhou 15 orbital module,” Smithsonian astronomer Jonathan McDowell wrote on X.
In November 2022, three astronauts rode the Shenzhou 15 spacecraft to the Tiangong space station, discarding the module that finally burned up in Earth’s atmosphere. The crew stayed in space for six months and then landed in the Gobi Desert in June.
