SpaceX's Falcon 9 launch lights up LA sky with a dazzling display that some mistake for an alien invasion

When it comes to putting on a display, you have to hand it to Elon Musk and his products. The residents of Los Angeles were in for a spectacle on 22 February after SpaceX launched it’s **Falcon 9** rocket from the Vandenberg Air Force Base at 5.27 pm (local time) for delivering 10 satellites to lower earth orbit. All the satellites are reported to have been successfully deployed. [caption id=“attachment_4272181” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] The Twilight effect from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. Reuters[/caption] A great plume of light and smoke shot across the night sky, creating a dazzling display and making a lot of heads turn up. Many believed the plume to be an alien or UFO of some sort and reportedly, many cars stopped on freeways to take photographs and videos of this bizarre sight. The LA Fire Department later issued an advisory stating that the “mysterious light in the sky” was the Falcon 9 rocket launch. Elon Musk himself joined in the debate as to whether it was aliens in the sky or not and jokingly claimed that it was a “Nuclear alien UFO from North Korea”. SpaceX had begun tweeting about the launch from around 5.00 pm PT,  according to USAToday, and the launch itself was live streamed on SpaceX’s website.

Nuclear alien UFO from North Korea pic.twitter.com/GUIHpKkkp5

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 23, 2017

This was the 18th and final launch of the year for SpaceX, said the report. The satellites deployed are the 4th set satellites out of a total of 75 for a company called **Iridium** , which plans to form the  “next generation global satellite constellation,” called as the IridiumNEXT, according to the report.