Fireballs Appear Around the World as Parts of SpaceX Crew Dragon Scream Back to Earth

For all his faults, Elon Musk sure knows how to keep things interesting. Yesterday, skies around the world lit up with what seems to be returning debris courtesy of Musk's private space travel company SpaceX. Specifically, the Dragon Freedom-2 Deb, a module that launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida in September of 2024 as part of a NASA mission to bring two astronauts to the International Space Station. Last week, the crew module of the Dragon returned to earth, bringing back four astronauts, including Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore, both of whom became stuck on the ISS in June of 2024 after technical difficulties with Boeing's Starliner turned their eight-day stay into a months-long ordeal. But yesterday, the unmanned portion of the Dragon — assumed to be the unpressurized cargo trunk, due to publicly-tracked Dragon reentry data which closely matches reported locations of the fireballs — rained down on skies as far apart as California, Nevada, Morocco, and Australia. That caused ... Read full article.