Spoiler: It wasn’t aliens… probably.
If you were out watching the Perseid meteor shower Tuesday night, you might’ve noticed something strange streaking across the Central Ohio sky—slower than a shooting star, brighter than a plane, and just odd enough to make you say, “Uh… what was that?”
Turns out, we weren’t imagining things.
In a rare bit of spaceflight timing, two different rockets launched within minutes of each other last night, and either could’ve been behind the mysterious glow.
First up was the Vulcan Centaur, United Launch Alliance’s most powerful rocket to date, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 8:56 p.m.
The mission? Delivering a cutting-edge military navigation satellite capable of resisting jamming in geosynchronous orbit. Thanks to the timing, altitude, and clear skies, the Vulcan’s exhaust plume likely lit up for hundreds of miles, including right here in Columbus.
But just before Vulcan took off, Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket launched from French Guiana at 8:37 p.m., carrying the MetOp-SG A1 weather satellite.
Its path to a polar orbit may also have been visible from parts of the U.S., and skywatchers on Reddit noted the object they saw seemed to move north, which matches Ariane’s trajectory more than Vulcan’s.
So which rocket did we actually see?
The most likely culprit for the especially dramatic glow over Columbus is Vulcan, given its brightness and burn pattern.
But ither way, we got one heck of a free show. No tickets, no travel—just a reminder that sometimes, space history shows up in our own backyard.
Featured image via ULA (Facebook).
