Did you see an alien-looking swirl in the sky? It's probably SpaceX.
A mysterious light blue swirl puzzled skywatchers from Britain to Croatia on Monday night. Many thought it looked like an alien signal from a sci-fi movie. But the illumination appeared to be linked to a SpaceX rocket launch.
'We've received many reports of an illuminated swirl in the sky this evening,' the British Met Office wrote on social media Monday night. 'This is likely to be caused by the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, launched earlier today.'
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'Someday, when Americans actually make the trip back to the moon — or the ultimate trip to Mars — they'll start right here in Brevard County," Taylor said. Aside from SpaceX, EDC officials provided a list of Brevard's anchor corporate investments since the end of the shuttle program, nearly 14 years ago: ⬤ Blue Origin. In a 2015 move hailed by economic development officials as a shift "from a shuttle shutdown to a commercial space rebirth," Bezo's private company announced it would build a rocket manufacturing facility on the Space Coast. Fast forward to today. Blue Origin has invested more than $3 billion in facilities in Florida and employs more than 3,000 workers in the state, primarily on the Space Coast. The company's ever-growing rocket factory on Merritt Island sprawls across more than 230 acres, building massive New Glenn two-stage rockets. Former NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe told FLORIDA TODAY this "unbelievable" complex is one of the biggest construction infrastructure efforts at the Cape since the 1960s. ⬤ L3Harris Technologies. In 2015, Melbourne-based Harris Corp., which partnered with NASA on space projects for decades, acquired Exelis Inc., a global aerospace company based in McLean, Virginia, in a $4.75 billion deal. That same year, Harris Corp. opened the six-story, 450,000-square-foot Harris Technology Center in Palm Bay to house about 1,400 employees. And in 2019, the company merged with L3 Technologies to form L3Harris Technologies, America's sixth-largest defense company. Today, L3Harris ranks as Brevard County's third-largest employer, trailing only Health First and Brevard Public Schools. In 2023, the defense-contracting giant completed its $4.7 billion acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne. ⬤ Northrop Grumman. 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Looking ahead, Federal Aviation Administration officials are collecting public comment on SpaceX's proposal to boost Falcon rocket launches up to 120 per year just from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. "It really used to be an event when the shuttle went off, and people would line the roads and they'd watch the shuttle go up. Night launches were particularly spectacular. But today, it seems like it's not so much an event ... sometimes, it seems daily there's rockets going up," Florida Historical Society Executive Director Ben Brotemarkle said. "The future looks bright for the space program. And there's certainly continued growth that you can see today in Brevard County. It never ceases to amaze me driving down the roads," Brotemarkle said. For the latest news from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and NASA's Kennedy Space Center, visit Rick Neale is a Space Reporter at FLORIDA TODAY. Contact Neale at Rneale@ Twitter/X: @RickNeale1 Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches. Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here. This article originally appeared on Florida Today: Rockets, aerospace growth take off in Brevard in NASA post-shuttle era
