At about 03:30 GMT on Wednesday, the sky across northern Europe was illuminated by an object zooming through the air in flames. "I immediately thought of a sci-fi movie where it looked like a troop formation about to attack," Simon Eriksson, a workman from Malmo, told the Swedish state broadcaster. The pyrotechnics were in fact caused by a Space X Falcon 9 rocket re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. There are reports of sightings in Denmark, Sweden and England. Pieces of the rocket then crashed into Poland and, experts say, may also have landed in Ukraine. At around 10:00 local time (09:00 GMT), Adam Borucki was astonished to find what appeared to be a charred tank measuring around 1.5m by 1m behind his warehouse in Komorniki, Poland. The debris appears to have damaged a light fixture in the warehouse's yard. Borucki contacted the police who, working alongside the Polish space agency Polsa, determined that the unidentified object was debris from a Falcon 9 rocket, manufactured by Elon Musk's company SpaceX. "We are investigating how the object ended up in this location, but the important thing is that no one was harmed," police spokesperson Andrzej Borowiak said. A similar piece of debris was discovered in a forest near the Polish village of Wiry, according to Polish police. Polsa has confirmed that "an uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 rocket's second stage occurred between 04:46 and 04:48 on February 19, 2025, over Poland". The SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket is used to transport people and payloads into the Earth's atmosphere. It is designed to be reusable. The rocket which created this debris was launched by SpaceX from the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California on 1 February. "It was supposed to re-enter the Earth's atmosphere in a controlled manner and crash into the Pacific Ocean," Harvard University astrophysicist Dr Jonathan McDowell told the BBC. "But the engine failed. We've seen it orbiting Earth for the past few weeks and we were anticipating an uncontrolled re-entry today, which is what people saw burning in the sky. "The debris zipped over England at around 17,000 mph, then parts of Scandinavia then parts crashed into eastern Europe at a few hundred miles an hour." Space debris from rockets and satellites re-enter the Earth's atmosphere several times a month. Usually, pieces of space debris are entirely burned up by Earth's atmosphere but larger pieces can fall to earth. According to Dr McDowell, an uncontrolled large rocket re-entry is rare and has the potential to be dangerous. "So far, we've been lucky and no one has been hurt but the more we put into the Earth's orbit, the more likely it is that our luck will run out," he said. "This is the fourth incident recently with a SpaceX Falcon which is causing concern. It looks like glitches like this engine failure are becoming more common." So far large pieces of debris have been confirmed in Poland but Dr McDowell suspects that pieces have crashed into western Ukraine where the comet-like streaks of light in the sky "were clearly visible". "It's quite the omen for how our civilization is changing," he added. — BBC
