SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket debris creates dramatic fireball over Europe, crashes in Poland
A SpaceX rocket stage fell to Earth early Wednesday (Feb. 19), blazing a trail of fire through European skies.
Across the English region of Lincolnshire, the fireball was visible over homes, with locals posting images on social media, the BBC reported.
“It was quite bright, so it does seem to have been quite a substantial object,” astronomer Paul Money told the BBC.
A Falcon 9 upper stage (#62878), which was launched on 1 February 2025, reentered the atmosphere over Europe at approximately 04:46 CET this morning.Video credit: Ludi, taken from Leipzig Central Railway Station, Germany, and used with permission pic.twitter.com/xw6YWWeaVGFebruary 19, 2025
An early morning Reddit post showed the fireball over Berlin, and later on Wednesday, reports from Poland detailed a large object that fell from the sky outside Poznań, a large city in western Poland.
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“Today, around 9:20 a.m., we received information from employees of one of the companies from Komornik near Poznań that, after starting work, they noticed an unspecified object resembling a reservoir on its premises,” said Łukasz Paterski of the Poznań Police, according to a website that provides news for the city. “No one was affected as a result of this incident.”
The flaming debris was part of the upper stage of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket that launched 22 of the company’s Starlink internet satellites to orbit from California on Feb. 1, experts say. The Falcon 9 upper stage is expendable (unlike the rocket’s first-stage booster) but is designed to be brought down in a controlled fashion shortly after launch.
That didn’t happen on this particular mission, however.
“The Falcon 9 second stage from the Starlink 11-4 launch failed to deorbit itself on Feb 2. It reentered over Northern Europe last night, with entry over the Irish Sea at 0343 UTC Feb 19 and the reentry track extending to Poland and Ukraine a couple of minutes later,” astrophysicist and satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, said via X early Wednesday morning.
The Falcon 9 second stage from the Starlink 11-4 launch failed to deorbit itself on Feb 2. It reentered over Northern Europe last night, with entry over the Irish Sea at 0343 UTC Feb 19 and the reentry track extending to Poland and Ukraine a couple of minutes later pic.twitter.com/UzvsiHPZX8February 19, 2025
The Polish Space Agency (POLSA) confirmed that finding in a statement, noting an “uncontrolled entry into the atmosphere of a member of the FALCON 9 R/B launch vehicle — the object with the number NORAD/COSPAR ID 62878/2025-022Y — over Polish territory.”
“The part of the rocket, weighing about 4 tons, came from the SpaceX Starlink Group 11-4 mission, which took off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on February 1, 2025,” the agency added (in Polish; translation by Google).
Later, a second object that closely resembles the first was discovered in the forest near Wiry Village, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) from the first debris-landing site.
“We cannot rule out that the object found near Poznań comes from the Falcon 9 rocket, whose flight we monitored,” Agnieszka Gapys, press officer for POLSA, told Reuters on Wednesday. “Confirmation of this requires appropriate examination.”
Recently, a photo posted to X from a Europe-based reporter suggests that a third piece has been found.
As of Wednesday afternoon, SpaceX had yet to release a statement on the debris. This story is still developing.
