Last night , California was treated to a spectacle like no other .
The sky lit up with a display more redolent of asupernovathan a Sunday night , sonic boomsrang out across vicinity , and the city manager of Los Angeles sent outa tweetreassuring occupant that what they were take in was " nope , emphatically not outlander . "
The lawsuit of all this hullabaloo ? A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a journeying that would make history .
strike off from Vandenberg Air Force Base last night ( October 7 ) at about 7.21 pm local time , the Falcon 9 ’s primary finish was to fork over a planet , theSAOCOM 1A , into orbit for CONAE , the national space bureau of Argentina . SAOCOM 1A , as the name involve , is justthe first of a mathematical group of satellitesthat will include SAOCOM 1B , and it will be used to monitor innate disasters , crop yields , and soil - wet grade , agree to theBBC .
But it was the 2d stage of the mission that made the record books , as the rocket ’s reusable booster came back down to make thefirst everland - based landing place on the West Coast .
And across the region , spectators watched as the awesome show fired across the sky .
" I watched the launching from Santa Ynez peak , about 40 miles from the fundament , " Joaquin Baldwin toldSpace . " It was salient , the fog lit up and quickly the horizon turned flushed … It attend as if we were star into a nebula , with two bright eyes staring back . "
Last nighttime cross off the30th landing out of 62 launchesfor SpaceX , but only the 12th on solid ground . Previous landings , however , have all been at SpaceX ’s Cape Canaveral base in Florida , where the companymade history back in March 2017with a first - ever 2d flight for a reusable Falcon 9 .
Residents of Los Angeles capture some stunning shots and footage of the rocket engine ’s ascent and return .
Even the metropolis ’s mayor took the time to appreciate the breathtaking showing .
Although for some onlookers , the display urge on for little terror than awe .
Social media user who did n’t know about the launch constellate online to take about the lights they ’d understand in the sky , prompting a monumental spike in searches for " UFO " in California .
Listen : while there may bereasons to be optimisticabout our chances of get contact with alien life , this is of course another encounter with aclear and obviousexplanation . It was just a really , really beautiful rocket launch .
